I don't think that has never not been a thing... Read memoirs/letters from earlier times and you'll see plenty of it too. The big shift was probably admitting the children don't yearn for the mines, but we seem to be heading back that way (eta: in the USA anyway I won't paint other countries with our fuckery lol).

Some of the details in these are kind of interesting. I assume the pitcher and plate/bowl it's on were for washing up in the morning. Just fun to see the items put in the backgrounds that were normal for the time and not so much now.

Some of it was DDOS but a lot of it was just server overload which sucked horrifically. DDoS was its own thing because I did have trouble logging in during those times.

Can't say how it was for Endwalker, but I did experience a lot more server lag on Dynamis than I did before the launch. Getting in wasn't the problem so much as being in instances and just having minute long multiple lag spikes to the point I was often going from lag to lag. Had this even in duty support. My understanding is this was "better" because I could even log in at all, but it did absolutely suck trying to learn new mechanics where I was in MSQ and learn how to play around entire dungeons being slide shows of lag at the same time.

ETA: I got up to Amaurot about the day after pre-order drop happened and then worked up through Seat of Sacrifice over the heaviest weeks was absolutely miserable with the lag to figure out what was going on. I also do MiNE ex/savage and had a few I'd been progging I just had to bow out from because when we got to new phases I was having so much lag they weren't showing for me and the majority of the time I'd be either killed by something I never got an update to see or last person standing because I was lagging so much I didn't ping into the damage.

If they're trying to do an animated spin off of the live action Barbie movie they have grossly missed the point. People who saw the Barbie movie aren't going to watch an animated movie to see if Ken is finally "kenough". Honestly not sure why they wouldn't stick to the animated movie prescription of promoting their latest line either. It's a toy they can sell and frankly not all of those movies are even terrible. They're not going to win Oscars, but the animated Barbie movies wouldn't have to up their game much to be in the running for animation awards as they're generally pretty meta making them fun for all ages. They had an animated online series (dreamhouse) that was well-acclaimed before the live action movie and actually seemed to inform how some of the live action movie was done.

Really sounds like sitting on a gold mine and then trying to steal the workers' bathroom because suddenly it got the "right" interest via controversy.

Sometimes they just make up whole new stories (Bleach) or say fuck it and go their own way (Fullmetal Alchemist). I feel like the more accepted recent approach though is having a mini-series of an arc which has normal pacing (actually even often accelerated pacing cause they only get 12 episodes) and then just putting the show on hold.

And then you have when the anime affects the manga and the manga starts stretching the story out for "content" (feel like this happened with My Hero Academia and Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun). If it was a novel that's being published on a pay by chapter platform you're just completely fucked because they (generally) follow the Mark Twain model of pay per word so once a story gets popular that shit absolutely gets milked into the ground. If you're lucky they waited to do the anime until the comic adaption was half done at which point the novel will hopefully be done...

It's actually on spotify, but you can also find some of them on YouTube, meat fulton's site and audible/general audiobook retailers!

So from the article the Lae'zel ending only happenings if you

Super spoiler don't think there's a spoiler text accepted across all instances yet

Accept becoming a mind flayer and some events thereafter and then follow through with Vlaak'ith telling you to kill yourself. This "rare no one's taken" glitch ending seems to be if you listen to Vlaak'ith, but don't turn mind flayer you can still take the kill yourself ending if you check the mind flayer box ...despite not being mind flayer. Which could only happen through a glitch. So it's just a you could take this path if you'd checked X box but you didn't so can't "ending". I'm not sure what this article is trying to say honestly as it's literally just "if you make X choice you could get Y ending, but if you glitch the game to believe you made X choice you could get Y ending" article.

If you read the article, this isn't a rarest ending like the headline says. There is an ending playing as Lae'zel most players don't take because it's a bad ending that obviously ends the story. The ending being talked about is a hacked ending that was maybe an idea at one point to get to the above ending via an alternative path, but wasn't ultimately implemented. I wouldn't even call this an ending frankly. It's more "there's some game files that can lead to each other if X or Y is marked, but actually can't because Z being marked cuts that path off". More of a glitch than anything.

Going to add some suggestions here for people who might not like the radio personalities setup a lot of podcasts have, but don't have a place to start. Would appreciate anyone with suggestions adding on as I listen to audiobooks more than podcasts!

• Parcast Network podcasts — they have several presenters covering a variety of topics (mainly true crime, disasters, cults, myths/legends/fairytales). This is the blandest, no shooting the shit, no radio personalities, formulaic as you can get. Their presenters are all mild mannered toned and the shows generally follow a format with a few variations (ie some of them give some random bullshit pulled out medical diagnosises to criminals, some are more sensationalized "could the killer have possibly been thinking this?", etc). If you don't like how one set of narrators present an event you can absolutely find a presenter you prefer on the network as the shows cannibalize the same stories between each other. Not the most factual podcasts and in-depth is anathema to them, but if you're just looking for something inoffensive on in the background while you do the dishes they work.
• The Other Half — one presenter, short episodes, well-researched women through the ages. This is a sort of sequel to the Queens of England podcast by the same podcaster. Each season focuses on a specific type of historical woman (current season is royal/political mistresses). The episodes are short, focus on the history, there is some modern contextualizing (in the vein of now that it's not 1304 we can recognize getting up three days after giving birth to go tell an invading army to fuck off was a lot of work lol). Mostly though it's just the history.
• Dan Carlin's Hardcore History — another good history podcast that covers a large variety of topics, but the episodes are long. Doesn't make it a bad podcast, but six hours in length isn't rare. Lot of straight history, but also modern contextualizing (like the Romans didn't see executing criminals in the colliseum for entertainment as bad, but in modern times we would view that as very fucked up) and philosophizing (not sure I'd say getting up on a soapbox so much as this was the Roman's philosophy about this, let's follow their schools of thought).
• The Magnus Archives — horror anthology with an overarching story. Very good production values and even if you're not interested in the broader story there's a ton of great creepypasta type stories.
• Tales from the Stinky Dragon — DND play podcast with great production values and relatively short episodes (think they're like 30min?). This is heavily edited to cut out a lot of the parts of DND that drag as a listener (multiple rounds of that's a nat1, going back and forth on plans, etc) so though there's some discussion between the players/DM it's generally pretty snappy and most of the run time is just straight story. That said sometimes they do include tangents where the players meta joke with each other (this is probably the least offender I've heard for this though, if a tangent happens it's usually five minutes at worst).
• We're Alive — zombie apocalypse story podcast. Has multiple shows, several completed, with great production values (probably one of the best I've heard for sound production). This is a radio play style podcast so cliffhangers abound. Being a zombie "story of survivors" many of the characters are probably going to ping obnoxious at first as part of the genre is survivors learning to work together.
• Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe — so this actually was a radio play back in the day, the company has just updated to the present. These are trippy whimsical stories about Ruby, the interstellar detective. It started in the 80s iirc so expect to hear a ton of synth. The stories themselves run on a ton of puns, a quirky crew of heist characters, abstract philosophizing (in a what do robots dream of and colors taste like way) and trippy music to listen to when you're high.
• Myths and Legends — myths and Legends to lofi beats. Super chill, nothing more going on here, does have a lot of ads read by the narrator hard coded into the podcast so even if you pay for your podcasting service you do have to sit through them (not usually an issue since you can fast forward unless you're driving ime).
• Myths Your Teacher Hated — myths and legends, but told in a Badass of the Week style. Episodes are usually one myth/legend and one legendary/folktale creature. Unlike everything else on this list the narrator isn't really a mellow soothing tone type so if you don't like loud voices not a fit.
• Let's Talk About Myths, Baby! — in-depth podcast on myths with a lot of research and modern contextualizing, big feminist bent. The host does soapbox. Mainly listing this because it's the only "I want opinion discussion, but I don't want to hear five people discussing it between talking about what they ordered from Wendy's" podcast I listen to. That said she talks a lot about her research and goes into the various sources she's drawing from and their differences, so if you're looking for in-depth she's a great stop.
• Batman: The Audio Adventures — honestly way better than it has any right to be, kind of an offshoot of 60s Batman and 90s animated Batman. Does the radio play style intentionally and very well. Even if you're not into Batman you might enjoy it as a noir comedy.

There are podcasts out there that are more to the point. Honestly it's like old radio. Talk shows are just going to be more popular cause like said it feels more like hanging out with friends.

If you don't like that format though look for podcasts with only one person on the cast (or if they have another person it's someone they're interviewing). There's a lot of great history podcasts that are one person presenting, they have a script, they get through it in 20 minutes. You don't have to listen to ten minutes of shooting the shit and "personalities" first, they just get straight to it and edit to keep it tight. Fiction story and play podcasts (ttrpg) also have a good representation in this category too (though they also have plenty of round table discussion ones so you'll have to vet).

Oof I feel bad for his partner had no idea he was in pairs from the way he's been talked/meme'd about....

Most Olympic athletes are young and wear fashion athletic clothes donated by endorsers who help pay them. In addition in the shooting category you're (as I understand it) allowed a certain amount of tech to help you out. This man is older, didn't wear the endorsed fashion clothes or the tech and won gold silver so he feels like a rare "every man" win in the Olympics. He is not an "every man" (believe he's a decorated military and police man in his country), but a lot more people can relate to him winning gold silver than a 14 year old who's been training for this since diapers in a fashion house outfit.

Just feathers pinned to it. Was common to have overly decorated hats if you could afford it in ways we wouldn't consider fashionable today (Mrs. True's hat looks like a modern flower cake also lol). This tradition is not dead, for some modern examples check out the royal ascot races, kind of a fun/funny tradition.

Gith became resistant to the mind control over the millenia. This is why in 5e the race has psychic resistance. The duergar were also slaves of the mind flayers and this is why they have psionic fortitude. There's some other races that have been altered due to being enslaved (derro, kuo-toa, quaggoth), usually resulting in some form of psionics and madness.

Part of what makes mind flayers interesting because their society touched and left scars on a lot of other races. Gith are just the loudest about it in part because they live in the Astral Sea where time doesn't age them so, outside of dying during raids, many of the gith who rebelled can easily still be around leading to the rebellion being fresh in the gith's minds (as opposed to the duergar for example who live on the material plane in normal time and have had empires rise and fall and numerous generations since the enslavement).

Personally don't really find the snack sized Cthulhu aspect that interesting. What really interests me about them is the lore about them once being a great empire of douchebags who were overthrown by those they oppressed (gith) who then took their place politically and now hunt them down. Says a lot BG3 focused on this lore over the Cthulhu monster aspect. Just some good lore building which could have (and I'm sure has) gone to any other races.

If I'm into the story, yes. Feel like this kind of question doesn't understand that a lot of stories only have going for them resolving one or two questions. Once you know the answer the rest of the story is so average it's hard to care to finish. For example I read a lot of otome isekai (tl;dr romance novels where the heroine was sucked into a novel/game). Once you know the twist it's just a subpar story.

That said if a story is kind of shitty and I'm considering dropping it, but I read a spoiler the twist is actually really good and puts the crappy parts in an interesting context I'll keep reading. So case by case, reader by reader basis. I have stories I only finished because I read a spoiler, but I have just as many I never finished because I read a spoiler.

It's not the kraft variety.

Yulo was also offered lifetime supplies of free buffets, baked mac and cheese, and chicken inasal, a grilled chicken dish, by various chain restaurants.

I know Stinky Dragon edits stuff out to keep the run time down. I assume for live streams the DMs just use the "it's dead when it narratively fits/needs to happen to stop bad rolls from dragging this out an hour" rule and players know to focus more instead of spending 30min on cock jokes after finding a cock fight that then devolves into a heist plan to free all animals in the village and make them the masters of their own fates lol.

Historians' best kept secret: Roman aerial dogfights

Women to the left and right of that one appear to be holding crowns and laurel leaves (sign of triumph for Romans). So I assume the one you're referencing is holding the winner's sceptor for some kind of games this is possibly referencing.

"After approaching the coelacanth to encourage it to move between two cameras positioned on a custom-made stand, the team turned on the lights. "At this depth, some think that there is no light," says Ballesta. "There is [very] nice light. It's tiny, it's soft, but there is still light. So, it's important to not use too much artificial light. It's like driving in a car at night. If you put your lights on full, you see just in front of the car, and all the rest is dark. If you switch off your lights – and there is a little bit of moon – suddenly you see everything: the road, the mountains, the forest. It's the same when you're deep.""

For anyone else wondering.

Listening to He Who Fights With Monsters rn and enjoying it. Started out slow, but once the ensemble characters get introduced it picks up.

I enjoyed Trash of the Count's Family (licensed in English as Lout of Count's Family by Seven Seas) until it got too repititve and drawn out for me (which tbf was smtg like 600 chapters in) though that one's lighter on the game interface aspect (ie you're not getting stats and ability blocks). The found family focus is nice.

So I'm a Spider, So What? is really heavy on the game interface, but the weirdness of the premise (what it says on the tin here) and the quirkiness of the protag with a sort of deuteragonist who handles the more serious side of the story until it all comes together was good.

There's also an whole "girls' genre" focused on visual novel games that's pretty popular (haven't read/watched it, but My Next Life As A Villainess I think is the most popular). Heads up though these ones are usually around having to build relationship and romance meters if you're just looking to stick to power leveling "boys' genre" stuff (which no shade both are fun!). Villains Are Destined to Die is a pretty good one I've read for the genre, but severely depressing (there's a bigger story, but most of it is about "I'm stuck in a game world that forces me to deal with an abusive family and it's making me suicidal"). Probably more happy girls' genre ones, but I can't think of any that have an official English translation/are default English off the top of my head haha.

If you wanna dive into the genre I think most important decision is what amount of gamifying you want to read about it cause it extends from "character woke up in/is playing a game and it's rarely if ever mentioned this is a game world again" to "every other page you have massive game statblocks dumped on you and are supposed to remember entire stat systems, skill trees, etc".

Really interesting subject thank you for the recommendation!

Beautiful, thanks for sharing! I'd buy this today it looks that nice.

This is the one I bought. It works pretty well and has controls for each half so I can just heat one side if I want to address aches on that side or both if I'm trying to warm up quick. Haven't run it through the wash yet so I'm not sure how it holds up there. Otherwise for pets (since I have a cat) their claws don't get stuck on it, but they may cause threads to get pulled out (I haven't had this happen a lot, but I figure if you have big dogs or something you'll see a lot more threads pulled out; I have a miniature pincher sized cat so small dogs I assume wouldn't cause too much wear and tear). It heats up pretty fast too, I think it only takes about ~2-3 minutes and once it's heated up you don't feel the lumps from the wires inside.

King size heating blanket. Wrap myself up like a burrito after work and I'm in heaven. Just wish I'd done it sooner, my last place didn't keep heat in well, but I felt like spending $100~ on a blanket was crazy and was stacking multiple cheap ones to not freeze in my own home.

Iirc everything's loaded as one map so you don't have long loading times going from lot to lot. So if your sim goes on a date downtown you don't have to then load downtown to continue playing and then reload the sim house when they go home.

Idk about hit, but decent success maybe? Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers wouldn't be bad with a re-release that fixes the controls (gameplay is mainly a series of mini-games which the timing is off for making attempting completing them a rage inducing task) and the travel map areas redone to have actual purpose instead of "here's a zany spot with cyclical weather where you can throw stuff around to play with our gravity code". The story was pretty good/interesting imo as a Final Fantasy version of Cowboy Bebop.

• Boardwalk Empire - 1920s-30s period drama about mobsters, prohibition, etc set in New Jersey/Atlantic City
• Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries - 1920's period detective show set in Melbourne
• Peaky Blinders - haven't watched it myself, but my understanding is it was pretty popular, 1920s period drama about a gang set in 1920s Birmingham
• Fargo (season 4) - haven't watched it again, but I've heard good things and season 4 (it's an anthology series, each season is a different cast/story so you don't have to have watched the previous seasons) is 1950s Missouri with gangs

From playing d&d with a few definitely... Never had another group try to convince me it's simple math to work out the dynamics of a fireball and how far it would really go in a tunnel system because they wanted to get enemies around a corner too lmfao.

It's definitely frustrating. I'd understand if the modteam (same ones are top mods for the subreddit and the discord I was told) have a plan for a different space, but I didn't see any replies from them on reddit or the discord unfortunately beyond their post on the subreddit for the most part.

I did advertise on !newcommunities@lemmy.world and I've been keeping an eye out for asklemmy threads about community recs, so hopefully we can get some more organic growth continuing forward. I am unfortunately in the same boat of having currently quiet hobbies though. I mainly TTRPG and Wizards decided to blow their drama in the beginning of the year unfortunately lol.

I love how fed up Damar gets by the end of the war lol

US, 30s, yep. When I needed a new car decided to get one cause I was driving an hour to work and thought it would help me with driver's trance (cue sad laugh track...). Ended up having to order a new car cause I couldn't find one I wanted that was manual within a reasonable driving distance that wasn't complete junk. Didn't really help my problem, but I do love driving it lol.

Kind of weird because automatics make me uncomfortable to drive now, they accelerate so easy I feel like I have less control (though I'm sure this is just a skill issue on my part).

We've got a lot of reposts though I am working on a write-up of that time a Japanese romance comic had a black heroine's reward be "you turn white".....

I would expect a lay article to absolutely define these things. If nothing else, gets their word count up so the author can be paid more and helps the lay person understand what they're reading about, win-win. I know Reuters is more of a gives the mere basics so other news sources can pick it up and write more encompassing listicles site though so I'm not gonna have greater expectations for them here. Thanks for posting!

This is a good article I think for DMs who have only done one system! I can only talk about 5e here, but:

Backgrounds as Skills

Iirc in the DMG you are encouraged to take backgrounds into account though not really given a tangible way to figure this. In modules too there are backgrounds tailored to the adventure, but again you're not really given direction in how to figure this. Personally I just lower DCs, make information more accessible, etc to people whose backgrounds it would apply to. For example I often get the my girlfriend was killed by X and I've been genociding them in revenge background from new players so if the enemy they're facing is X I'll give them more insight into the enemies' tactics, culture, etc than other players as their character has a background of vested interest in fighting this foe.

Super Easy Monsters

All I can say is the 4e directions on how to run monsters never should have been ditched. I don't mind the long statblocks that much (though it is annoying because many of the spell selections tend to be nonsensical fluff, what is that lich going to do with prestidigitation....). I haven't even played 4e, but I do like to convert older dragon and so on magazine adventures to 5e for one-offs and every time it's a 4e adventure it's so much easier knowing there will be a how to run the combat section. When I do 5e straight up I usually rework the encounters myself to make a bunch of video game-esque combat cycles (first the monster will use bless on allies and then x and then y, etc). So I feel like it's not even the long statblocks that are the main issue here, but that it's hard to divine from them in 5e what the go-to combat round actions envisioned here are.

Escalation Die

This is an interesting concept, but honestly I'd just rather lower AC and HP to be more in-line for the experience you're trying to give. My players talk way more about one shotting enemies in round 1 than they do about finally being able to get that hit to one-shot in Round 4 so I'd rather lower AC if it's an intentional fight to make them all feel like heroic badasses. Just from a numbers point as well the monsters would also be getting more "heroic" and you have the problem of their ability to one-shot your players (at lower levels) increasing. I think lowering AC/HP and sticking to average damage (no rolls, attacks just do X) for monsters probably works better here, especially at low levels.

Icons

So 5e does kind of have this. Modules have backgrounds with built-in connections and there's an optional rule called Plot Points (p. 269 DMG) that's similar to this, just not focused around important NPCs. I actually like a rule from another game described to me by someone (I think it's Blades in the Dark or another heist game) where you get a point and can spend it to overcome a complication as long as you explain how your character prepared for it ahead of time. This doesn't require the PC to play off any NPC connections which I find to be harder for players who are there more to roll dice than tell a story and new players.

Range Bands

I think PbtA uses a similar system (haven't played it, just been told by my players) and it works really well for TotM. Personally I just limit it to melee and ranged. Keeps it simple and if we're doing a big boss battle I pull out the map. I don't really do combats on wide open plains so I don't find far to be useful, but that's just me!

Thanks for sharing!

Fair, I think they're really at a loss what to do with her. I think she was best when she was Nadja's kind of secretary, maybe she could help one of the others with something in the future lol especially since Guillermo's dealing with his own stuff too much to be the servant sidekick right now

Bestupdates is an archival community bringing together all the parts of a posted saga into one post. It's not for giving advice to the original OP. To do that you should follow the info at the post start and link at the bottom to track down the original posts from the original OP.

tl;dr- this is a voyeur community, not an advice community

Very fun episode, I love seeing the Baron and the roast was great. Was nice to see the Guide again. Sad her storyline of trying to fit in with the group has just kind of fallen off, I always enjoy her.