I’ve been plowing through Three Body Problem series by Cixin Liu recently and it’s been really great. I’m on the home stretch of the last book and so excited to finish it.

All about space exploration, first contact, invasion, advancement and philosophy. A really great thinking book and leaves me with lots of uncomfortable feelings to ponder over. The pacing of the book took a little bit to get used to but it does well to help grapple with the time and space scale it is working with.

Same as any other game really.

With Pirate Borg there is a really great “sandbox” style thing included with the book that lets players freely explore and roam a large area with lots of dungeons, caves, encounters etc. We had a bigger offshoot story arc that we were following from some previous games in other systems and tied in to a story arc on the island that interested the players.

With Mork Borg I was trying to do a rapid fire series of lunchtime games over a long campaigns where players were being called upon to do things by this unseen force.

It was actually a thing that came up during character creation where we gave the group a common background element. The element we rolled was that all the players hear the incessant sounds of the insects and worms that tells them to go places and do things. This is enough to pretty much take any one shots and tie them together as part of something bigger. What that bigger thing is? Who knows. We will figure it out and I enjoy letting the players find meaning in stuff like that to make it powerful.

Cyborg and all the Mork Borg games are so great. I want to play and run them more too. I did a few months long Pirate Borg campaign and it was such a blast. I really want to give Vast Grimm a go too.

These games are just so fast, fun, random and wild. Such rich tools for great storytelling. Love, love, love them.

That is what this particular type of furnace is called in glassblowing. A glory hole is a specific furnace for reheating glass that has been gathered to keep it at the right temperature.

I needed to learn Go quickly for a small little side project and I was able to run through the fundamentals Go track in about a week and a half doing a few exercises here and there.

I've been exposed to quite a few programming languages so a lot of the common principles are there for me. What I really needed was to learn how Go is different and what the unique things about it are.

For example, I didn't need to learn about why loops are important. What I did like learning is how a for loop in Go was structured and how to use it in different contexts. Utilizing range was a great thing I picked up from their examples.

Exercise is a great hands-on tool to supplement and support learning.

Gorillaz - Stylo is pretty awesome. One of my favorite music videos ever.

Caravan Palace - Lone Digger is really awesome as well. Great song and well animated.

I have at least 4 companies on my banned list, but the ones that come up most often are…

• Starbucks - I like good coffee. They just can’t seem to deliver and just focus on mass appeal to overly sweet milk drinks. No thanks. Good coffee doesn’t deserve that.
• Blizzard/Activision - They need to clean house. Horrible treatment of people inside. The games they produce aren’t good even that good. I refuse to play their stuff as popular as it might be.
• Disney - I don’t think they produce anything really valuable. Their marketing is amazing but I don’t like what they have given us. I honestly want nothing to do with Marvel or Star Wars and dislike the direction they have gone with those franchises.
• Wizards of the Coast - all their game products are clearly cash grabs. Building in expiration so customers have to buy more is awful. I do not play Magic the Gathering and never will. I have also grown to dislike Dungeons and Dragons. It’s not even that great and there are so many better, more interesting games to play.

That’s just a few of my old man rants.

No, that’s a necklace job

He’s talking about connecting to work on the Internet over the air without any cables at all

It’s taken a while to find “my people.” I try to surround myself with good people both ocially and professionally. And the kind of people I like to be around tend to be good discussion partners and usually make great collaborators and storytellers. I hope you can find your people someday too! Keep looking, they are out there.

You made no bad faith argument here. Your response for further discussion was a great prompt and right in line with this thread but clearly they don’t want to engage.

I really dislike this trend of responding to comments with the red badge of “bad faith argument”. It is awfully dismissive, particularly without saying why, like in this case here. Best case, they may expect that you know exactly why you are being accused of that and want to shut down bad faith arguing, but if you have no idea why, it’s really just meant to insult or harm. Ironically, accusing someone of a bad faith argument without explaining why may be considered bad faith arguing.

Sorry you got a response like that. I thought your response was good, thoughtful and good attempt at more discussion. I agree and don’t have much to add, unfortunately, but just wanted to support your post.

insecure people who struggle with social skills

Hi, also me. Nice to meet you.

This is why I run “rules-light” systems and why you won’t find me running (or playing, anymore) games like DND. The complexity of rules is just too much for me to remember and memorize. I don’t have it in me to argue and debate about applying a rule and would prefer not to interact with someone who is rules lawyering. I find that having those rules there is more intimidating to me than anything else. I feel like I have to work with rules first and then find ways to be an agent of my character within that.

Because of my own insecurities, I tend to lean on systems that require more collaboration, discussion and openness. I can’t really be wrong if we have collectively decided on a choice about our story. And even in that, calling it, our story carries so much power and lifts a huge weight off of my shoulders in terms of pressure for both playing and running a game. This is how I can skirt around my own insecurities and work with the kind of social skills that I have and prefer to use. I want collaborators rather than adversaries since that is socially much safer. Consequently, this also leads to very rich storytelling.

I think there’s a harmful view that ttrpgs are like a meal the GM cooks and delivers to the players which they either enjoy or not rather than a collaboratory effort of mutual play.

This is beautifully said. The kind of adversarial approach we see so often, and I see it quite often with DND, is harmful. Of course this is not the only way things have to be, but the context seems to set it up like that more often than not.

Complexity of rules and mechanics tend to lead to adjudication because of the way it can be interpreted. I find that in other systems, particularly in OSR style stuff, you get a different kind of thing. It’s not a rule, but a tool. This is kind of what I have loved about games like Mork Borg lately. Rules are simple, easily applied, and when you start to look into the world of supplemental material, there’s thousands, if not tens of thousands of additional rules and tables, you can apply to any situation. Take them or leave them. Apply them or don’t. Use them once, never or every time.

Ultimately, you do what the situation calls for to make for an interesting story, and just like you said, that takes trust between you and the players to talk about and determine what that is.

$20 CAD for a brew!!! That’s really impressive and an amazing value. We do have a great local homebrew scene here and our local suppliers offer pretty good value for equipment and supplies. I probably could get similar costs as well. Unfortunately like the OP in the thread I don’t have the kind of space for bulk grain and milling machines or other bulk storage. Being in an apartment has it’s limits and Ive pretty much hit them. I’m satisfied with my cost efficiency even knowing it could be better under different circumstances.

Cool to hear that you have great cost efficiency! That’s awesome to see. Thanks for sharing!

As an alternative view, I homebrew and while the cost to get in can be a bit steep, the long term costs are actually pretty good. I looked at the cost to get equipment as a loss and just wrote it off. Electronic kettle and automation was pricey, but luckily I was able to have some costs offset with work benefits. Realistically though, in actual ingredients, between $30-50 USD for 5 gallons of beer and about 8 hours total of time for cleaning, brewing, fermenting and packaging, it’s not too bad.

I tend to be very meticulous though with my brew process, so I haven’t lost a batch, at least not due to contamination. I’ve had some beers that weren’t great, but when you put it in perspective, a 12 ounce serving probably cost me about $0.50 - 1.00. Comparatively, while not great, it was still drinkable and as good as anything I could get for that price.

Being able to make decent sized quantities of good beer to take to parties, give as gifts, and just have on hand really diminishes the hit of the cost of equipment. I feel like it’s been worth it.

I think this looks like a Marigold, but not sure what specific kind. Certain kinds do get quite big and don’t do well in pots.

That being said, it looks like there are two or three stems at least there and this pot may be a little small for this plant. I don’t know exactly how dead it might be but it may liven up with a bit more room. Marigolds like loamy soil. A combination of dirt, sand and clay that also drains well. Maybe try a bigger pot and see if it perks up.

Even the synthetic ones are great. Your options for colors are a bit more limited but the quality is still good. Would still recommend those over Bombas. I was disappointed in the Bombas quality and found myself having to buy them more often due to wearing down quickly.

Ultimately I hope you can find what you need! All the best to you, friend!

A lot of great advice in this thread.

Adding a note here about socks. Don’t bother with Bombas. They are fine, but no better than other generic socks you will find out there. I was all in to the hype of them too but after using them for a few years i found they don’t hold up any better than other socks. I wouldn’t consider them an “investment”.

Now, if you want to invest in a sock, consider getting Darn Tough. They are more expensive, however their wool and synthetic socks are pretty solid. I find they hold up way better than my Bombas ever did, are much more comfortable, moisture wicking of wool is very good and, best part, if they fall apart, wear down and get holes, Darn Tough will replace them. They will have you send them back and give you a credit to get a new pair. Full credit. It’s fantastic. Highly recommend.

I remember Drawball being pretty popular on 4chan back in the mid 2000s. It was a lot of fun.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/drawball

Someone has done a similar thing here: https://drawball.io

Right? That’s exactly what I wanted and didn’t get. But I did get bombarded with a half dozen ads in my search through the article including one that wanted me to pay them for this stellar reporting.

No, they don’t seem to last long at all. Those two there have already fallen off but there are three more farther down.

It brings me a lot of joy that it was happy enough to flower for me. I spent many years thinking I was terrible at talking care of plants, but now, knowing and better understanding what they need, it has taught me a lot.

Thanks for your comment!