In session 0 we set a quorum. “We play if there are at least 2 of 4 players here,” for example.

During a session, if some players don’t make it, we’ll decide on the spot what to do. This is typically either “They take care of some of their own business” or “we play them by committee”. Rarely, it’s “the GM plays them.”

In a recent game of mine, one of the PCs bailed. His character backstory said he owned a small business, and since the session started in a low tension scene, we said he had to go take care of that.

In a game where we picked up in the middle of a fight, we decided to play the wizard by committee. It was a little slower than normal, but it worked. After the fight was over, they didn’t do much other than a few committee approved skill checks. I wouldn’t typically make big story decisions or put the character in serious danger when the player was absent.

It’s also important to set attendance rules. Are you okay with people showing up whenever? Or do you want to set an expectation that people will be there every week barring emergencies? Those are two different, valid, modes. For a game that’s trying to have an arc, and not just monster of the week or a dungeon crawl, having players frequently missing can be disruptive. I typically bring that up in session 0, and say that if someone repeatedly misses sessions it might not be the game for them at this time.

Yeah I think a lot about the guy I knew that took a job at palantir. When asked about working on questionable stuff, he just shrugged. He was always nice to people he knew personally, so far as I can tell, but bigger picture stuff didn’t seem to matter to him

Is this an age thing? I’m about 40 and I never had instagram, barely used facebook, and didn’t use any others really. I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem where someone backed out because I didn’t have instagram. But I also don’t have a big group of casual friends, and maybe that would be harder.

Discord sucks, but I’ve noticed a lot of social groups use it. A couple meetups I go to all use it for communication. Maybe that’s more bearable than instagram?

Crawl is one of my favorite rogue likes!

One of my friends who is in no way a coder knows the vim navigation from crawl now

will humanity ever learn to stop acting like dumb angry monkeys?

Seems unlikely.

As to your broader point about the tools themselves not being bad, the root problem remains capitalism, or “a few people have unaccountable power over many”

I feel like the current AI stuff has been net negative. It prompted layoffs and hiring freezes, but then didn’t produce quality results.

You have to jump when you’re doing it, too. if you touch the ground before it finishes, it won’t work and you’ll just get shocked.

If you clear some post-game optional challenges, there’s a special move you can unlock that does it easier, but that’s only useful if you want to do NG+

Hours on the centipede man, you say? Once you get into the deflect rhythm, they’re very satisfying. Fill their posture right up and then finish them. But without the timing, you’re going to take a lot of chip damage or get posture broken yourself :(

Sekiro is one of my favorites. I like that it’s not really about leveling, and it pretty much gets right into it. I could pick it up today and blast through a new game.

Do you know how to do the lightning reversal? There are a handful of bosses that it really counters.

I think I remember some doge goon asking online about using an LLM to parse JSON. Many people don’t understand things.

Interesting, but I can’t imagine writing out that much of the game’s truth ahead of time. I’m always leaving things undefined so I can slot in a good idea (from me or the players).

action-adventure game

I feel like taking an extremely turn based game and making it “action adventure” is a weird choice. BG3 was a mega smash hit and turn based. If you want to funnel more players into your tabletop game, you probably want the video game to be kind of sort of like the tabletop. I have doubts about this.

I still have the onyx path WoD 2e books, and I enjoy them. I find it confusing that there several variations of “World of Darkness”

I’ve always had trouble finding players, not DMs, but yeah could be.

I feel like if you’re going to get a group that shows up on the regular you might as well just play regular DND?

no different than taking a bunch of books you bought second-hand and throwing them into a blender.

They didn’t buy the books. They took them without permission.

This is pretty good advice. I’ve sort of stumbled into it a few times.

Sometimes I’d be like “ok so here’s the room. Blah blah blah details. What’re you doing?”

Andy will be like “I’m gonna check out that detail”

I’ll get like “cool. You all see Andy head over to that detail. Good?” And sort of pause there for a beat to see if anyone wants to interrupt or preempt.

I think the linked article is a generally better method as it’s more complete, but I think mine is a little faster. Especially if you have a couple passive players.

DND 5e (the rules the game is based on) is a weird system, mostly forgiving.

Your stats matter a lot. The bonus from stats only goes up on even numbers. A 10 is +0. An 11 is +0. A 12 is +1. Yes, this is crazy.

You can only improve your stats every 4 levels, where you can choose to get +2 stat points (or take another bonus from a list, but most of them aren’t worth the opportunity cost)

Different classes and backgrounds have different “proficiencies” in skills and equipment. Your wizard can’t function well in heavy armor. The game will tell you if you put on something you can’t use. Pay attention to it, otherwise you might end up wondering why you can’t hit anything or cast your spells.

The game expects you to long rest in camp a lot. Even though the story suggests otherwise and it says resources are limited, don’t worry too much about it. A lot of story beats happen in camp, and most of the game isn’t really time sensitive. Dnd’s balance is kind of stupid imo in that it expects you to do like 6 encounters before resting, and that typically means (after low level) only the last one is a challenge. Rest as often as you need to. Blow your spells. Don’t be like me and hold onto them until you finish the whole map.

You can respec for cheap pretty early on, too. Can’t change your species or background but you can change your stats and class.

One of the bars by me has a DND group in the back.

There’s a “community center” also near me that lets people hang out in the basement, and there are rpg groups that meet there

yeah, it really depends on the group. Some people love learning new stuff. Some people are like absolutely phobic of it.

Though I have a half-serious hypothesis: Some players are so bad at rules, the kind of player that asks every week “what do I roll to attack again?”, that you could just change the system without telling them and they wouldn’t notice and do any worse.

Though that’s less true for systems that require creative player buy-in like Fate. D&D in the “I move and attack” mode can be phoned in easier, I think.

I do find it puzzling when people homebrew and tinker and modify D&D 5e to fix all the things they don’t like, but they don’t want to just change to another system. It’s mostly harmless, at least.