Boz (he/him)

I love the Gangnam Style reference, lol.

U.S., and I don’t know how many businesses here use it, but I think it’s quite possible to avoid using it socially here. I’m not sure if I even know anyone who does use it, and certainly no one has asked me to get one.

Thank you for your hard work, and for keeping us updated on the situation.

I don’t know, I think Musk might actually have an inferiority complex. He’s obsessed with himself, but he puts an awful lot of effort into trying to prove that he’s cool. But yeah, they’re both terrible, it doesn’t really matter who’s worse.

Probably the shirtless pic was a carefully calculated move to short-circuit theories about his lack of humanity, by showing that he has a navel. [/s]

…for real, though, at least the man utilizes his paid PR staff.

I think the most useful reconception is not to take “insertion” out of fields where it’s a useful, literal description, and instead, take it out of the realm of gender and sexuality, where it limits imagination. It’s 2023, and no one has to do things exactly like their parents did [at least once]. Unless they want to, in which case, great, but human bodies are extremely versatile.

…semi-relatedly, the issue with the kind of equipment I’m talking about is only partly terminology. It’s a category of similar items made by a variety of companies in different sizes and configurations, so standard terminology would not create standardization unless a lot of companies agreed to do it. It’s something where measurements often help, but there are also some more… innovative… designs where measurement is not applicable in the same way, and would be confusing.

…is it bad that as a trans man who knows nothing about electrical connectors, I still find this rant relatable? You’d think there would be some kind of terminology for getting your equipment to play with your other equipment, but no, and don’t even get me started on what happens when it has to interface with organic systems…

If they want to pretend they’re not doing it, sure, I’ll pretend I don’t see it. If I think they’re fudging the dice too much, and it bothers me, I might bring it up with them privately, or I might suggest a group discussion, or I might just leave.

In general, I try to evaluate a GM as the whole package, rather than just the individual choices they make. If I like their campaigns, there’s no point in picking on individual decisions (beyond obligatory mild grumbling, of course, lol). Sometimes, they’re going to get results using techniques I wouldn’t choose, which is fine. If I don’t like their campaigns, there’s still no point in picking on individual decisions. I would rather drop out as soon as I realize something isn’t working out than stick around, lose my temper, and say something I will regret.

Glad I could help! And I hope the campaign goes well, it’s a fun concept.

How about some modernist classical music? The more discordant stuff by Shostakovich and Stravinsky would be more or less in period, and suitably sinister. Also, some of it is quite epic. I’d look for symphonies or ballets rather than chamber music.

Very thorough! I like your framework of needing to provide an incentive to join the pirates rather than the navy. That’s exactly the kind of organizing principle I find useful with world building.

Fresh vegetables have vitamin C, too, so you could give them credit for that. If the actual party gets scurvy, and you want to make it a plot point, I recommend you make their most recent battle wounds reopen. That’s a real potential symptom of scurvy, and is likely to confuse them. Technically, it wouldn’t be the first symptom, iirc, but it’s easy to communicate in the context of a campaign, and scarier than bleeding gums, though I think the root cause is the same. (Something about connective tissue breaking down).

I mean, depending how vicious you want to be, lol, I am the kind of person who weaponizes realism in fiction or games. I think a little unexpected horror helps people focus on the story.

How do pirate captains manage the health of their crew, particularly in the areas of nutrition and disease?

On a more granular level:

1. What are the staple, easily-stored foods, and how are they supplemented with fresh foods?

[Are we talking ship’s biscuit and salt beef with regular landfalls to get fruit and vegetables? Is there magical cold storage so they can have frozen whatever? Do they take vitamin supplements? Do none of these things happen, so long voyages always result in nutritional deficiencies, including scurvy?]

2. What level of medical knowledge and expertise are available in your world in general, and on ships in particular?

[Are they even at the level where they know and acknowledge that scurvy is caused by poor diet? Is healing all magic and four-humors pseudo-medicine? Is it difficult to get a competent physician to join a pirate crew, leading to bullet wounds being treated by barbers or dentists?]

3. How do pirate captains deal with contagious diseases, and what are the most common shipboard epidemics?

[Is quarantine a thing? …in a confined space? Do they have the germ theory of disease at all, or is the focus on “bad air” and ventilation, or demons, or divine disfavor…? Are they looking at flu, plague, body lice, intestinal parasites, syphilis, all of the above…? Do crew members generally comply with the orders of the captain and/or surgeon, or are you likely to have half the crew sick, and the other half mutinying?]

4. How are battle wounds dealt with?

[Related to 2, but you’ll want specific protocols for different kinds of injuries, removal of bullets, shrapnel, or arrows as relevant, suturing techniques or lack thereof, bandage material, disinfectant or lack thereof, pain management—other than liquor—if any, ways of dealing with infection, if you want to go there, and, of course, prosthetics, because, IMO, you can’t have a pirate setting without the option of peg legs and hook hands, and anything else bad you think might happen to characters in battle].

5. How much value do captains place on keeping a crew alive, vs just replacing crew members when they die from injuries or disease?

[Fun fact: the British navy—and other Western navies—used to deliberately overcrowd ships at the start of the voyage because they knew a large portion of the crew would die, and they wanted to retain enough sailors to make it home. Quite possibly the death rate would have been lower without the initial overcrowding, and it definitely would have been lower if they had invested in medical care rather than extra recruits. I suspect pirates were, historically, as bad or worse in this respect. The extent to which captains in your world see crew members as replaceable vs repairable will be demonstrated by your answers to the preceding questions, or, if you’d rather go the other way, might help you decide on the answers].

…all of which probably makes it sound like I hate maritime dramas, which is totally false, lol, I love them, I just have a really morbid imagination.

It should look like three red beans in a vaguely triangular arrangement.

Annnd, sold! I was going to go for the fire sword that only lasts one day, but I would probably just set my clothes on fire with it.

I think a lot of GMs can honestly answer “yes” to that question, lol, so careful you don’t turn the session into a discussion of their latest writing project (along with the writing projects of anyone else in the group who feels like talking about writing).

…unless that’s your jam, in which case, go for it!

…I am concerned about that. I would expect player handbooks to be the last thing you’d want exclusively digital, since most of them are hard to read on a cheap e-reader, and they’re already expensive. Does WotC think people are going to buy the book and a tablet or laptop to view it? And then bring said hardware to a session? Does WotC not understand that some people like to play outdoors?

I guess, as the article says, it’s their push to make everyone play online, but I feel like it’s not a good move for them to try to compete with the kind of online RPGs that have always been digital. That’s not an easy market to get into, and it doesn’t matter how much money is in a market if your company isn’t equipped to succeed there.

I don’t actually want to hide all the posts I have read, since a lot of them are things I want to go back to. What I really want to hide are posts that I am not interested in. Is there an app that will let me select which posts to hide? Or is that feature under development? As Lemmy grows, it’s becoming a huge issue that I can’t prune my feed without unsubscribing from whole communities.