Lianodel

The “Nice Necromancer” is honestly such a fun character. You get mad scientist vibes, plus playing around with some ethics and taboos.

I remember hearing some argument about how Raise Dead is inherently evil because… the book says so. Which instantly made the conversation a lot less interesting.

See THIS is a more interesting version of the conversation. :P The one I saw was something like, “Raise Dead creates an Evil creature, and creating an Evil creature is an Evil act, per the rules. Period, end of story.”

And heck, even without exploring shades of gray morality and cultural constructs, having raised dead trap the soul of the person is more interesting worldbuilding. Even if it’s a black & white situation, it drives home who the villains are.

I’m so frustrated that 5e’s design goal puts SO MUCH emphasis on balance, for encounters and between players, but is consistently so bad at it.

And look at half of the memes here and you’ll see how bad they are at precise technical writing. Which is weird, because the M:tG folks are great at it, and they’re right next door.

Exactly. It’s sort of an uncomfortable middle ground, but also just kind of messy.

And I’m tired, as someone who DMed it a bunch, hearing people act like broken or missing rules aren’t a problem, or somehow even a good thing, because the DM can just make something up. Yeah, not shit. I can do that in literally any game I run. It’s just unpleasant to do in 5e, yet I have to do it all the damn time to keep the game running smoothly. I’d rather have a game that either supports me as a GM, or is easier to improvise.

That’s one of the things that bugs me about conspiracy theories. So many of them don’t even have a point.

How can so many be people be so wrapped up in conspiracism, but never once have the though, “Oh, wait, why would anyone do this? It’d be pointless.”

Hoo boy. Against my better judgment, I’ll wade into this pool.

1. If voting for either party gets you the same result, fascists wouldn’t be so focused on elections and trying so hard to take the vote away.

2. Withholding your vote doesn’t do anything. When has losing an election pushed either party left?

3. Voting doesn’t prevent you from engaging in other forms of direct action.

Both parties suck. People will needlessly suffer and die no matter who wins. But there are also people who will suffer and die under one party but not the other, and the same can’t be said the other way around. Our democracy is fundamentally flawed, but voting is a tool at our disposal, and we’re in no position to turn anything down.

My potentially controversial take is that metagaming is neither good nor bad. A metagaming problem is really just some other problem that rears its head through metagaming.

You can metagame and be a good player. It’s like doing improv with dramatic irony. If you’re prioritizing the gameplay and everyone’s enjoyment, it’s a useful tool.

If you’re using it for the personal advantage of your character, though… that can also be fine. Some old-school games, especially dungeon crawls, are like strategy games testing the players as well as their characters.

It’s when there’s a disconnect between how people are playing the game that you get problems. If someone wants to play a strategy game while others want to play improv, and they’re not thinking about what kind of approach is appropriate and when, that you get issues.

Time to take a meme on the internet too seriously! :D

There are two things that bug me about the weirdly frequent discourse on Batman.

Firstly, there’s no one version of Batman. You can find bastard fascist Batman, and you can find actual justice Batman. Hell, you can find both by Frank Miller, depending on the point in his career. My favorite version is from The Animated Series, and you’ll find tons of examples of Batman using kindness and compassion to affect meaningful change, instead of reveling in violence as though it solves anything. Heck, he’s nicer to working-class folks, even sympathetic criminals, than to his fellow rich people.

Secondly, I think it’s a talking point with bad optics. Batman rules. Why let the fascists have him? If there are loads of ways to look at and interpret the character, I’d rather focus on the one that makes him the good kind of class traitor, anti-fascist, anti-cop, and fighting for economic and social justice.

You’re pretty much describing a scene from Batman: Year One. He crashes a party full of rich people to intimidate them. It’s actually the good Frank Miller comic I was talking about.

Yeah, that’s one of the episodes that immediately came to mind.

Harley: There’s one thing I’ve gotta know: why’d you stay with me all day, risking your butt for someone who’s never given you anything but trouble?

Batman: I know what it’s like to try and rebuild a life. I had a bad day, too, once.

It was absolutely a rehabilitative vision of justice. The same thing happens with The Ventriloquist, where Batman is extremely supportive, and goes to great lengths to talk him down after he was manipulated into returning to crime. Heck, there’s even a villain, Lock-Up, who personifies a cruel, punitive form of justice. He even reveals the guard’s abuse, through a clever ploy, as Bruce Wayne, in a hearing about Arkham.