jjjalljs

@jjjalljs@ttrpg.network

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jjjalljs ,

Wow those people are scum bags. They call it "so called climate change"

jjjalljs ,

Money would like immediately be reinvented.

"I need my window repaired but I don't know how to do it"

"I can repair windows but I need someone to help my sick dog"

"I can diagnose animals but I need someone to translate Spanish".

"I can translate Spanish but I need someone to deliver this package "

They're not going to all line up and do a series of trades. Someone's going to be like "what if I give you a token, and we all agree that token is worth work? Then you can take that token to anyone*

jjjalljs ,

The person I replied to literally said "the rest by bartering or agreement". I guess you could stir money is an agreement but that's not what I took from their message

Also how are you going to solve the scenario I provided?

jjjalljs ,

I don't understand how that's going to solve the scenario I described.

There's stuff I can do but don't want to. There's stuff I would do in exchange for something. But once that "something" isn't what you have, the reasons for currency become apparent.

jjjalljs ,

I'm not trying to be obtuse but I'm not following.

In the example I gave, is the guy going to repair the window out of the goodness of his heart?

jjjalljs ,

So if someone asks me to do a thing for them, I can only do it when working in an official professional capacity, or through unofficial favor exchanges?

jjjalljs ,

That "whatever you want" is immediately going to turn into tokens, which are currency. That's almost certainly how it happened originally.

"I'll do this for you if you give me some shiny rocks, then I can go to the city and trade them for a cool hat" or whatever.

jjjalljs ,

Because I don't want anything you have, but trying to build a whole barter chain where we trade everything in sequence until everyone gets something they want is wildly impractical. As described in my first example.

And yes, today I pay a dude money and he does the thing. I don't have to clean his gutters so he'll agree to knit me a sweater.

Why do you think money came to be originally?

jjjalljs ,

If you go all the way to the start of this thread, it began with "Money shouldn’t exist. Hope that helps!". So that's what I'm arguing against. Money will be reinvented because it serves a very real purpose.

Also if something happens 1% of the time you still have to account for it.

And "I can do the thing. I don't really enjoy it. For some incentive, I'll do it" is more than 1% of what's happening in life.

jjjalljs ,

Money predates capitalism. The reasons why it was originally invented remain. Once your favors have any complexity at all, someone's going to have the obvious idea of "why don't we abstract this?"

jjjalljs ,

I save scum sometimes. I did a lot in bg3 because the skill checks have such a big random factor.

I don't save scum in my favorite rogue like (Crawl: stone soup). Most of the time losing feels like my fault, and not just random.

jjjalljs ,

They're probably hoping to not hire a replacement at all

jjjalljs ,

I liked The Dispossessed a lot, aside from one scene. The book overall really made me think.

jjjalljs ,

It's difficult to compromise with people who want to kill you for what you are.

jjjalljs ,

In groups to protect, outgroups to bind.

jjjalljs ,

Tinder and the other apps are pretty bad. Partly because they want to make money, not matches.

But also partly because the users suck at using them. People are like "I want interesting conversation" but reply with nothing but "lol". Come in my dude put some work in.

jjjalljs ,

Somehow I hadn't even considered fake profiles. I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse about the situation.

jjjalljs ,

Weirdly, none of them really focus on the non-monogamous market. There's a section of likely long term users.

jjjalljs ,

A lot of the polyamorous people I know are on the apps or have tried them, but aren't happy with them. Partly because the apps generally aren't good, and partly because you end up with a lot of wasted "your desired relationship structure isn't what I want" matches.

OkCupid has some support for it, but that app hasn't been good or interesting in years. Tinder lets you pick your relationship type, but you can't like filter by it. Soneone threatened to "report me" on Hinge (I think?) for wanting a non monogamous relationship. Maybe they thought relationship anarchy was something dangerous.

This might be different outside of NYC, where I am.

jjjalljs ,

They should probably limit how many swipes you get instead of having your swipes go into the void.

jjjalljs ,

Play a system that accounts for this.

Fate gives you fate points to spend when you do t like a roll. It also gives you "succeed at a cost" if your fate points are exhausted or not enough.

You can still just roll with it (pun intended) and die to a random goblin if that's fun. But you also have agreed upon procedure for not doing that. "It looks like the goblin is going to gut me, but (slides fate point across the table) as it says on my sheet I'm a Battle Tested Bodyguard, so I twist at the last second and he misses (because the fate point bumps my defense roll high enough)"

This is pretty easy to import into DND, too, if you like the other parts of it

jjjalljs ,

the problem with flubbing is the dishonesty and unilateralness. You can play a different system that doesn't create the situation your players don't like so easily.

Or honestly just import Fate points and "succeed at a cost" into dnd. The dice system still sucks but that would help tremendously.

jjjalljs ,

Some games have this built in and you don't have to fudge it.

Fate, my go to example, has important but simple rules around losing a conflict.

At any point before someone tries to take you out, you can concede. That's a player action and not a character action. If you concede, you get a say in what happens to your character. That's where you as a group say "maybe they stab me but leave me for dead in the confusion" or "maybe the orcs take me prisoner so you all can rescue me next week". Whatever the group decides is cool goes, but you get a say. You make this call before the dice are rolled. You also get one or more fate points, which is nice.

If you instead push your luck and let them roll, and their attack is more than you can take, you're done. The rest of the table decides what happens but you don't get a say beyond what was agreed to in session 0.

This would also be pretty easy to import into DND or most other systems.

jjjalljs ,

Inspiration in raw DND is extremely under baked. Bg3 expanded it a little by letting you hold more than one, and actually using it. Most tables I've played at don't use it, or it's pretty rare.

Fate by default starts you with 3 fate points per session. It expects you to use them and has clear ways of getting more.

I really tried to get my old DND group to use then more, but it didn't really click. I wasn't a good fit for that group really.

jjjalljs ,

I got down voted for saying this elsewhere, but to my mind there's a huge difference between the GM unilaterally changing the rules, and the group deciding.

Scenario: the goblin rolls a crit that'll kill the wizard. This is the first scene of the night.

Option A: GM decides in secret that's no good and says it's a regular hit.

Option B: GM says "I think it wouldn't be fun for the wizard to just die now. How about he's knocked out instead?". The players can then decide if they want that or would prefer the death.

Some people might legitimately prefer A, but I don't really want the GM to just decide stuff like that. I also make decisions based on the rules, and if they just change based on the GM's whims that's really frustrating and disorienting.

There's also option C where this kind of thing is baked into the rules. And/or deciding in session 0 what rules you're going to change.

jjjalljs ,

For your example, I'd probably still ask if the players wanted me to let the dice decide or not before rolling. My players once had a clever idea of setting some poison traps and using earthbind to deal with a wyvern. The thing made all of its saves and nothing worked. I could've lied, but we'd already agreed to openly roll and abide by it. Would lying have made it better? Maybe. The game carried on and that arc had a thrilling climax later.

Alternatively, if we'd been playing a game that has a "succeed with a cost" / "fail forward" mechanic it could have been satisfying. D&D and close relatives are especially prone to disappointment because of how random and binary they tend to be.

Anyway. All of this I think it reveals a difference in how RPGs are enjoyed by different people.

On one hand, there's going for immersion. The player wants to be in the world, be in the character, and feel everything there. It's very zoomed in.

On the other, where I hang out, it's more like a writer's room. I'm interested in telling a cool story, but I'm not really pretending to "be" my character. My character doesn't want a rival wizard to show up, but I as a player think that's interesting (and maybe want the fate point, too) so I can suggest that my "Rivals in the Academy" trouble kicks in now. I enjoy when I can invoke an aspect and shift the result in my favor, or when I can propose a clever way I can get what I want at a cost.

Neither's better or worse than the other, so long as everyone's on the same page. It can be bad if half the table wants to go full immersion and just talk in character for two hours and the other half doesn't.

jjjalljs ,

Cool. Unfortunately, facts and studies typically have little effect on the kind of people who oppose gay marriage.

jjjalljs ,

My understanding is that Uber basically lifted the idea from queer people. They were tired of not getting taxis so they started a service called homobiles ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homobiles )

Uber then did all the shitty capitalism things and become the huge money hole and exploitation machine we all know.

Airbnb also made the process easy it lead to rents raising by like 30% in some places .

So they have have some convenience and such, but on the whole they're probably a net negative.

jjjalljs ,

I got it from "the cold start problem" , so it's possible the author was mistaken or I mangled the details.

jjjalljs ,

I mean... yeah, pretty much. I don't want to deal with maintenance or the legal stuff, so I'd be willing to pay someone to deal with all of that. Not the outrageous rates that rent usually goes for, typically.

jjjalljs ,

perhaps you should learn the magic of ✨context ✨

jjjalljs ,

I think I played Ironsworn once. It was pretty okay. We played it GMless, if I'm thinking of the right game. I didn't really like that group that much, but it was an okay time.

PbtA really rubs me the wrong way and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe because the two times i've played it, I didn't really like the person running it or how they ran it.

But strangely, I really like Fate. Maybe because it's biased more towards success. When I played PbtA and BitD I always felt like my character was a fuckup.

jjjalljs ,

There are some lemmy communities/instances that are very pearl clutching / boot licking. There'll be a story about like a billionaire eating live puppies or a cop murdering someone and getting away with it, and anything along the lines of "maybe someone should forcibly stop them" is removed.

jjjalljs ,

Probably pull justices from the lower courts at random to hear individual cases. Much harder to bribe all the judges than like two well known supreme Court justices.

The ugly truth behind ChatGPT: AI is guzzling resources at planet-eating rates ( www.theguardian.com )

When you picture the tech industry, you probably think of things that don’t exist in physical space, such as the apps and internet browser on your phone. But the infrastructure required to store all this information – the physical datacentres housed in business parks and city outskirts – consume massive amounts of energy....

jjjalljs ,

Opportunity cost is a pretty well understood concept.

Like, inagine you have 100 gallons of water. You could use all of them to water a single water intensive plant that will feed one person, or you could use them to water a whole farm that will feed a community, and also let people drink and bathe and stuff.

The resource is limited.

Sure, we could try to get more of the resource and make it less expensive, but we should also not squander what we have.

jjjalljs ,

Do I not know how to use the Internet? I'd expect links to stuff but I see none

jjjalljs ,

I kind of like the idea of solarpunk and optimism, but I'm not sure about the system.

Using 2d10 instead of 1d20 is cool because, as they describe in the main book, that gets away from the "every outcome is equally likely" problem. So that's cool.

But otherwise I think this is crunchier than I'm in the mood for. I'd just play Fate nowadays. That even has reasonably good rules for non-violent conflict.

But I appreciate the effort that went into this, and like that it's not yet more grimdark fantasy or "absolute monarchy is totally cool" gristle.

The Alitos, the Neighborhood Clash and the Upside-Down Flag | Inside the escalating conflict on a bucolic suburban street that Justice Alito said prompted a “Stop the Steal” symbol at his home. ( www.nytimes.com )

There are some differences: For instance, the justice told Fox News that his wife hoisted the flag in response to Ms. Baden’s vulgar insult. A text message and the police call — corroborated by Fairfax County authorities — indicate, however, that the name-calling took place on Feb. 15, weeks after the inverted flag was...

jjjalljs ,

I always assumed scumbags like Alito lived somewhere in secret. Like in a bunker. Not just a regular house.

This is one of those communities that you can't advocate for violence on, though, no matter how much politics do violence to you. Cool. Very enlightened.

jjjalljs ,

I don't think I understand the tennis ball thing

jjjalljs ,

s. If there is any potential clarity issues, parentheses would be used, or it would be formatted in a way that makes it much more clear.

It reminds me of a very old xkcd that posits "communicating badly and acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness "

https://xkcd.com/169/

jjjalljs ,

Summons a surprisingly strong (ie: hard) familiar (ie: aid) in the form of a lemon.

Sort of a variation on this old joke: https://starecat.com/how-to-summon-demon-lemon-man-i-hate-cursive-wizard-fail/

jjjalljs ,

A significant amount of republicans probably sincerely believe that this tragedy is worth "saving the lives of all the other babies that would have been murdered."

Their moral calculus is foolish and predicated on questionable-at-best axioms. They are well meaning but functionally bad people.

Another significant chunk also adheres to "the cruelty is the point." They are bad people.

Unfortunately, for various reasons, republicans have a disproportionate amount of power in the US.

jjjalljs ,

Imho any game is either rules-heavy, and as such closer to reality with more defined rules for various situations, or it is rules-light, where GM-Interpretation is other needed to determine what to role. (Or somewhere in between)

I don't think more rules necessarily mean more like reality. You can have a bunch of rules for grappling, and create a system that anyone who actually does hand-to-hand stuff would say is nonsense.

That said, I think a lot of people would enjoy lighter systems than d20. Maybe not the people who get a kick out of the "lonely fun" of reading about builds online, but the people who just show up to play and the people who are there for a story? They'd probably be happier in Fate.

jjjalljs ,

T-shirt. Boxers. Sometimes a wizard robe. I work from home.

jjjalljs ,

It was a gift from an old partner. I think she bought a nice bathrobe and then put all the stars on it herself.

jjjalljs ,

You can buy music from Bandcamp. You get it drm free. There may be other sites that sell music too, but Bandcamp is the one I've been using.

You can also still buy CD/vinyl and rip it yourself.

jjjalljs ,

programmers who don’t say “we should just remake the whole thing” every tuesday.

We had a guy like that at the startup I work at. It was not a good fit and he's no longer on the team.

jjjalljs ,

huge caveats that I’ve never finished any presentable project and I’ve never done anything with a team, I’ve only done solo stuff.

These are moon sized caveats.

If you can't work with a team, you're not going to make it.

No one likes the guy who goes off on his own for four days and comes back with a massive pull request to review. Especially if it's full of idiosyncrasies, doesn't follow the team's standards, and doesn't actually meet the requirements because the guy didn't talk to anyone. That person is often a net negative for the team because the rest of us have to spend so much time bringing them in line with everybody else. Don't be that guy.

I think it's like a rookie developer rite of passage to go and make a huge, unsolicited, change request to the code and then having it get rejected. Get buy in from the team before you do stuff like that.

Also don't be the guy that never finishes anything at work. Management is going to expect you too finish the work you agree to finish. So is your team. If they ask you to add a date filter to the project page and you didn't finish it because you decided it would be cool to rewrite some build scripts from bash to node (which no one told you to do), you're not going to make friends.

Do what you want in your personal time, but working professionally means having standards.

Oh, and you'll probably have to write automated tests. I mean, a lot of software jobs are trash and have trash testing practices, but many are good. "Trust me bro" isn't usually good enough for a PR approval.

Hopefully you'll quickly figure out how to work with a team.

As for your main question, I don't typical work long hours, and the work is generally enjoyable. The pay is good.

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