An advanced technique: ask your players to make shit up.

Like, the players decided to go to the wizard university the wizard PC graduated from. So I ask him, “what’s their entrance hall like?” and let him just riff on it for a while. Players feel more engaged with the world, and it’s a little less work for me.

Warlock is trying to commune with his patron. I ask, “what is your patron usually like?” and the player is delighted to describe “the great sculpin” in detail. This then inspires me further.

Note that some players are very much “just tell me a story” and don’t want any input, and won’t like this. Some players are also shy and don’t think well on their feet. And some players are just really bad at staying on theme. But if you know your players , this can be a powerful technique.

I recommend players make their characters together. Fate’s rules for it are pretty good, and can be ported to many systems: https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio . The whole “You all meet in a tavern for the first time” mode is a valid way to play, but I’ve had friends do that and then struggle with how contrived it feels to fight to the death for people they just met, or go on a whole dangerous sidequest for someone else’s hobby.

I also recommend reading other systems. Not everyone needs to know dozens of games, but if you always play d20 games spending some time in a different branch of the RPG family tree can really be eye-opening. Or if you’ve only really played really light games, looking at how something crunchier does detail can be insightful.

I wonder if things get bad enough, Ukraine would take a shot at Trump. Back to the wall and all.

Musk seems like the kind of D&D player who would

• Build a horrible character (frankly impressive in 5e, which is pretty simple in terms of choices to make at the start). Like, a bard with 8 charisma, or a rogue with no dex
• Or, pay someone else to build their character, and then not know how to play it.
• And/or induce the other players to murder him (in the game)

I’ve found that when the players hit an outright failure, a lot of the time they just draw blanks or zero in on this one specific solution. It’s a weird tunnel vision.

Like, they want to talk past the doorman and he says no after they roll. Good players on their game will then think about other options. Sneak in the back. Set off an alarm. Impersonate someone who lives there. But i’ve just had so many players that just get stuck on this, and will try to spend 10 minutes on “What if I ask him nicely?”

I’ve started including a spiel about this in my session 0. “If an obstacle in the world has exactly one purpose in the story, and you attack it dead on, you may fail. Especially if it’s not also your strong suit. For example, there is a doorman of a fancy apartment building. His entire role in life is to look at people, and only let them in if they’re authorized. If you walk up to him, not authorized, and go ‘Hey bro let me in’, that will be a very hard check. That is shooting fire at the fire elemental. Disguising yourself will be easier, but still is in his domain of ‘Looking at people and only letting authorized folks in’. But going in a back door so he doesn’t see, setting off the fire alarm so he evacuates, calling on the phone and telling him his car has been towed, those ideas hit him where he’s weaker.”

Don’t put important details behind failable skill checks and just dead end it there.

Like if they find a book with ciphered text, you might be tempted to be like “make an intelligence + investigator check to decipher it”, and if they fail be like “you can’t figure it out”.

It’s better to do some sort of degree of success or succeed at a cost so the game keeps moving forward.

Like, on a bad roll they translate it but whoops awaken an angry spirit that’s now attacking them. Or they make some progress, but realize they need the key to fully crack it. The note in the margin says it’s at such-and-such flophouse, owned by the PC’s most annoying rival group.

I’ve done too many “you rolled … 0? Ok. Well you have no idea what this altar means” and then later regretted it because the players didn’t have a vital clue.

I would give them a chance to divest before guillotining. But someone having that much money is disgusting. You know what you could do with that? You know how much was stolen from how many people to acquire that? That’s disgusting.

Look at this “wealth to scale” website https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/?v=3

In case you lost sense of how big these numbers are.

But at least we agree that some billionaires should be hung.

Then you’re a fool, but I hope if it came down to it you wouldn’t go peacefully to a death camp. Maybe it’s too much to hope that you’d step up for your neighbors.

I’m reminded of the abyssal words in Elden Ring’s expansion. There are signs that tell you “Don’t let them see you!” and “You have to hide and run!”. You find an area with some tall grass and some creepy eye-monsters. And sure enough, if they see you they come running at you. They’ll knock you over, grab you, and explode your head.

Clearly you’re supposed to sneak by them.

But…

So many people are sitting on their hands going “Violence is never acceptable”.

I think I ate a 3 day ban on one of the communities for making a joke about guillotining billionaires. Bunch of bootlicking cowards. I get not wanting to go and do some murder on your own, but come on.

It was a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate cases where violence is appropriate.

You wrote:

Advocating for violence, regardless of reason, is sick.

In other words, there is no reason whatsoever, in your mind, where violence is appropriate. I gave an argument where violence would be appropriate. Do you disagree? Stay on topic.

Clearly false.

A man is threatening to shoot everyone inside a school. Are you not going to advocate force be used to stop him?

A far right group has risen to power in a nation. They are moving people into extermination camps. Are you not okay with fighting back?

Ten people are stranded on an island. One man has all the food and water, enough so everyone can survive until help arrives. He won’t share. Should the other 9 die of starvation, or take the supplies by force to share them more equally?

Defending the violent is also advocating for violence. It’s just against many powerless people, and more indirect.

There are people who are responsible for rendering our only world uninhabitable. By refusing to even entertain the idea that they could be stopped by force, you are advocating for continued, global violence. It’s less personal than a CEO being shot in the street, but it is violence nonetheless.

I’m not sure what you mean. There aren’t really a lot of “quests” in gw2.

There’s the main story, which is a green marker on your map. That’s always there (unless you turn it off or finish it)

There’s orange markers for nearby events. That’s like “zombies are attacking! Save the town!” or “help these kids pick apples” or whatever. They’re just things that happen in the world and, to a limited degree, change the world state. Like an area might be full of toxic vines until an event finishes successfully, or a merchant might only sell items after his mission succeeds.

There’s red markers, which are basically the same as orange, except they tend to be world events and not local.

And then there are collections, which are kind of like quests. They’re not super advertised. They’re kind of of “get these achievements for a special reward”. Sometimes NPCs will give you one- like “go find all my favorite fish” or whatever. They’re optional, but sometimes fun and sometimes have good rewards. Like if you finish the one where you get most of the achievements for one chunk of the game, you get a max-stats accessory that all your characters can share.

Anyway. Long reply. Nothing is really beamed into your head, no.

If we know where this “CEI” is headquartered and we know who their leadership is…

That seems fine to me.

There will be a lot of pearl clutching. Some people will literally walk themselves into the gas chamber while saying “we have to be tolerant” and “well they won the election”

But also organizing is hard.

It was kind of wild going from D&D to games that don’t have tons of HP.

Players make different choices when they have a maximum of 7 health, and a random mook with a baseball bat hits for minimum 2, maximum “well if the dice keep exploding…”

Among other problems, people knowingly spread falsehoods because they feel truthy.

The problem is people. We’re all emotional but some people are just full on fact free gut feel almost all of the time.

Match should be broken up. But apparently some people learned nothing from history and some people don’t care as long as they make money