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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 6th, 2023

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  • Cursed ring of acrobatics.

    Gives the player great acrobatic skill, but sticks to their finger when they wear it. And they can’t stop getting around acrobatically. Any action attempted fails, unless it is done acrobatically. Player has normal or only slightly improved stamina.

    Player: i’ll get my rope and grappleing hook and scale the wall.

    DM: lifts eyebrow you think so, do you?

    Player: sigh I throw my pack into the air and leap after it. At the peak of its arc, I flip over it, grabbing my grappling hook and flinging it over the wall as I do.

    DM: ok, sounds like difficulty of 15…


  • Yes. It’s a scalable hobby, and can run from virtually no cost to why-are-you-burning-money. But you can do a lot in gaming with little monetary investment.

    There are lots of budget indie games that are lots of fun, and if you find out you like gaming and want to try more fancy titles, you can always upgrade hardware.

    Minimal entry: your current pc. Install steam, and buy/try what you like, returning it if it’s too slow/doesn’t work.

    Light entry: get familiar with your pc’s ram size, hd/ssd size, cpu speed/type, and graphics card. Use that to ensure your pc can handle the game by looking at the game’s minimum requirements.

    Medium-heavy entry: Upgrade things.

    • ssd if you don’t have one. The difference between that and spinning disks is night and day. If you wished things loaded faster, get this.
    • 8 gb graphics card in the $150 range, amd or nvidia-based. Get this if you want a smoother experience / if you can notice individual frames happening. You don’t need the most expensive tech to play most games that are out there.
    • Genuine XBox or PS4/5 controller. These standard controllers are generally pretty solid and durable. $60ish
    • new cpu ($$$, and may not even be an option): most games won’t be processor-bound. But some are cpu-heavy. Get this if you really want to upgrade overall, or have a particular title in mind that needs it. Or…
    • Low-mid range gaming computer ($900 ($600-$1500)): wait until you want to do a pc upgrade, and get a low-end gaming computer. I recommend Lenovo LOQ or Legion. Lenovo in general has provided laptops that don’t fall apart on me, and that’s not something I can say about most computer manufacturers. That said, keep them long enough and you’ll have to replace the keyboard - but that’s every laptop out there that I’ve run across.
    • or: go crazy and buy everything all the time at the moment it his the market because it is a game or has “game” written on, near, or associated with it (not recommended)






  • Yes. You have a “share”. That’s the imaginary dropbox-like thing. Then you have a folder on some device that you link to that share. All folders you link with that share become the same on any device, intelligently.

    For sanity’s sake, unless I’m doing something like syncing game map folders across devices but inside a game’s special map folder, i keep them all in a folder called ‘sync’, and name the folders in ‘sync’ after the share name. Otherwise, things can get wonky. Consistent naming is important imo. With a share called “share with bob” started from a folder called ‘bob sync’ on sam’s end, ‘Sam’ on bob’s end, and they stay that way after anita joins, and she calls it ‘bob and Sam’ or something. Someone else joins and calls it “buddies”. Then, people say things like ‘i put it in the sam folder’, and it brings up questions.

    But with a little bit of organization, it’s awesome. Drop a file in a folder, and it’s now on the other person’s computer too. They move it out, and the file’s gone for you.

    If the computers can talk to each other (same lan, or proper internet connection) they will. If you have dysfunctional NAT or phones with no public-facing IP that are connecting to each other, just make sure some system can be accessed, and it’s all good. You want a cloud backup? Just set up the daemon on a server somewhere, and join the share.






  • This isn’t exactly “can’t live without,” that would be HomeAssistant. But what I Immediately thought of?

    Beyond All Reason

    This is an RTS game in the spirit of Total Annihilation.

    • labor of love
    • fully 3d, including ability to rotate or raise/lower view
    • tens of thousands of units without hardware lag for reasonably modem hardware (3-4 years old)
    • all shots actively rendered, leading to:
    • realistic friendly fire
    • even air units can get hit by ballistic shots targeting land units (although odds are fairly slim)
    • redirect-unit-to-dodge micro is effective in some situations
    • meaningful terrain
    • radar will have blind spots based on line-of-sight
    • radar gives clear indicator of coverage during placement
    • two factions, almost 200 units each, with tier 1, 2, and 3 units. A third (currently playable with a setting change) faction is in the works.
    • crafty, non-cheating ai opponents
    • free server hosting (!)
    • active servers all times of day

    The overall feel and balance of the game is great. The changes they make to balance are generally light and reasonable, and the game had a good community.

    Fam and friends play together often.