There are less obvious costs to living outside a city, especially if the city has transit. All the car costs, for one relevant example. The health loss from walking less. The isolation takes a toll. The shallower social pool. Fewer cultural options.

Also it’s not like apartments are dirt cheap in the suburbs outside NYC. I could pay $2000/mo for a nice apartment in Plainsfield, NJ… or I could pay a similar amount, not have a car, and live someplace where stuff happens.

Personally, I generally dislike puzzles in RPGs. My character has 20 intelligence. In real life I’m rocking at best 12. I am not going to make the intuitive leaps to solve this cipher like my character would. You’re not asking the fighter to demonstrate a shield bash or the rogue to pick a lock.

Riddles and puzzles aren’t nearly as interesting as explained choices, anyway. Do you take the Sword of Rivers from the tomb, fighting the guardian and potentially causing drought and famine in the region? You’ve been told it’s the only thing that can stop the Fire Elemental Incursion back home. Much more interesting than trying to figure out what a poem means or a sliding block puzzle, to me.

If you don’t want the players to know the cliché weakness so badly, why don’t you make up another monster instead of troll? Just sidestep the whole problem. It’s not Troll Canyon. It’s Grall Canyon. What the fuck are Gralls? No idea but they sound nasty.

Because clearly, some players are going to balk at “you want us to forget this well known fantasy cliché?”. And it doesn’t matter if you think their playstyle is stupid. It’s a game. People are trying to have fun.

You can turn that one on desktop off, btw

If only separated bike lanes were more common. I’m really not comfortable riding with all those cars just right there.

Apparently Vanguard has a whole proxy voting system that I left on the defaults!

Solidarity doesn’t have to mean they like have a club with a secret handshake. Their goals are aligned, and they tend to work towards those goals, even without explicit coordination. It’s rare to see anyone in the ownership class work against those interests. You don’t see a lot of the owners saying “we should give people more time off” or “we should let the workers have a say”. It’s pretty consistently “we should squeeze people for more money”. It makes the news when ownership is like “We’re going to pay people more”, and it doesn’t make the news when labor is like “i’ll just work a little more off the clock to catch up”.

Contrast with labor, where people are often undermining their interests. Being anti-union, voting against regulations that would protect them from exploitation, giving away labor for free.

Solidarity doesn’t mean they’re all in love and never squabble. But it does mean that they will prioritize their class’ interests, especially if it’s in conflict with labor.

I assume rich people often keep enough shares to control who sits on the board, and thus who is the CEO. There’s a lot of people sitting on multiple boards, folks know each other, blah blah blah.

Also many shareholders aren’t really involved. I don’t even know how it works if you own shares through Vanguard or something. I’ve never been asked to vote on company policy.

From what I’ve seen in start-up land, leadership is a lot of in-group bro times. It’s all gut feel. Shouldn’t expect rational, honest, decisions from them.

The rich have class solidarity. They’re not going to casually fuck each other over like that.

Nice! I got about two remorts in, but haven’t played in a while. It’s a pretty solid mud.

I’ll always have a soft spot for Project Bob, which I think shut down. Diablo-style items and a very fast paced combat system. Alas. Time marches on.

200 is a lot of people for a mud. The only one I know of that’s that big is aardwolf. Which do you play?

I know plenty of adults who are really bad at money and paying bills.

I feel like the average video game player has really poor media and political literacy, but maybe it’s just the ones who make noise online who fit that profile.

I typically buy music , most often from Bandcamp. I figure $10/mo gets me one or two albums I can keep forever. I tend to be more depth-first with music, where I get really into a band for a little while then move on, so this works for me.

Like I think stealth rolls should be hidden. You shouldn’t have an idea that you’re not hiding well.

I don’t have the players actually make the stealth roll until something opposes it. They’re doing the best they can. Here comes the guard. Roll, please.

Plenty of systems have something for that, often with a variety of options.

I believe 5e has a similar rule, but it seems rare for players to have actually read the rules. I don’t think D&D is especially detailed about this, but I don’t know where the book is to check. I don’t think they give DCs, where I wouldn’t be surprised if Pathfinder 2e had a simple “target number is 8 + the creature’s HD” formula with guidance on what to do for the range of possible outcomes.

I used to try to explain to management that some debt is high interest.

One of the guys at my old job submitted a PR with tests that basically just mocked everything, tested nothing. Like,

with patch("something.whatever", return_value=True):
  assert whatever(0) is True
  assert whatever(1) is True

Except for a few dozen lines, with names that made it look like they were doing useful.

He used AI to generate them, of course. Pretty useless.

then it would force them to actually confront the morality of themselves eating meat.

For many people, “I am a good person” is a core belief. An emotionally strong person may be able to look at a challenge to their core beliefs, assess its validity, and adjust. Most people are not emotionally strong. They see this thing like vegetarianism as an attack on their core self. And since they are not emotionally sound people, they lash out or make excuses. That’s easier than accepting maybe they’re not flawless paragons of virtue.

The oatmeal did a comic about this: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

D&D webcomic “the order of the stick” also did a comic that touches on it. One of the characters says that people like this, who refuse to look in the mirror and honestly assess maybe they’ve done something bad, are cowards. https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1151.html

And honestly that’s kind of it. People are scared, and scared people are stupid. The big “i eat nothing but MEAT” people are probably, contrary to their posturing, cowards. Worse than children, because they’ll probably never grow up.