jjjalljs
@jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
- Comment on Stunning new data reveals 140% layoff spike in July, with almost half connected to AI and 'technological updates' 1 week ago:
I don’t know. Some CEOs are pretty stupid
- Comment on Microsoft is saving millions with AI and laying off thousands - where do we go from here? 4 weeks ago:
Can we start reframing this as instead of “saved $500mm” we say “stole $500mm from labor”?
- Comment on Meta’s “AI superintelligence” effort sounds just like its failed “metaverse” 1 month ago:
I’m pretty sure you could really make a dent in the housing crisis, transit problems, food insecurity, any other real life problem of your choosing, with that kind of money. The fact that they blew it on “the metaverse” should be a crime
- Comment on Meta’s “AI superintelligence” effort sounds just like its failed “metaverse” 1 month ago:
He probably read Snow Crash (or maybe an AI summary, because he is a soulless husk) and thought it was super cool. It’s a dystopia. The book is not aspirational.
- Comment on WhatsApp Deploys AI, for Those Incapable of Comprehending Straightforward Messages From Their Friends and Family 1 month ago:
Most messages are so short I don’t see why you’d need a summary. Are people that poor at reading that like 10 sentences is a struggle? If so, education seems like what we should spend millions of dollars on.
- Comment on Tech CEOs are using AI to replace themselves / CEOs from Zoom and Klarna used AI avatars while reporting earnings 2 months ago:
There’s still going to be production, and I don’t think we should continue with the capitalist class extracting value and making bad decisions
If you introduce basic income without addressing that, you’ll still have all the enshittification
- Comment on Tech CEOs are using AI to replace themselves / CEOs from Zoom and Klarna used AI avatars while reporting earnings 2 months ago:
Basic income seems like an obvious solution.
Many people would pursue happy lives. Do some art. Do some gardening.
You’d also want to have like public housing or something so you don’t have parasitic landlords and homelessness.
- Comment on Tech CEOs are using AI to replace themselves / CEOs from Zoom and Klarna used AI avatars while reporting earnings 2 months ago:
My understanding is the most “useful” thing a CEO typically does is schmooze with other rich assholes. A lot of companies need funding, and a lot of funding is handed out based on vibes. A good CEO makes friends with the assholes handing out money. That’s hard to replace with AI, probably.
On the other hand, CEOs routinely make stupid decisions. Maybe cutting that out makes up for the loss in funding opportunities?
Also this capitalist hellscape sucks. labor should unite instead of letting business idiots take most of the value they create.
- Comment on Meta argues enshittification isn’t real in bid to toss FTC monopoly trial 2 months ago:
Zuckerberg is garbage and shouldn’t be allowed to keep living with his tremendous, ill-gotten, wealth.
- Comment on EA employees "upset and confused" at return to office mandate 2 months ago:
Folks should unionize. The people mandating these “return to office” schemes can’t do shit unless labor cooperates.
- Comment on Paradox Interactive's return-to-office policy may be driving employees away from the studio 3 months ago:
No one who mandates return to office should be in a position where they’re empowered to make those decisions.
Labor needs to organize and say no
- Comment on TikTok ban loses momentum as fewer Americans view it as a security threat 4 months ago:
I kind of want to live in a world where people stop using tiktok because short form video like that seems bad for your brain.
- Comment on What one Finnish church learned from creating a service almost entirely with AI. 5 months ago:
Big “y tho” response from me
- Comment on Why was there a pro-Hitler, Holocaust-denying ad on X? 5 months ago:
You’re an idiot that’s not engaging with my points. I hope you die alone, removed from everything you’ve ever loved.
- Comment on Why was there a pro-Hitler, Holocaust-denying ad on X? 5 months ago:
I’m not going to do legal research or write a whole thesis for you.
Maybe start here for cases where freedom of speech is not absolute: …wikipedia.org/…/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_theat…
You can also consider that the NYT is not legally or morally obligated to publish every letter they receive. Are your first amendment rights being violated when they opt not to print your letter? No.
I don’t want to discuss with you. I don’t think you’re acting in good faith.
I mean really “sometimes laws are incorrect” -> “fascists say that” is like satire.
- Comment on Why was there a pro-Hitler, Holocaust-denying ad on X? 5 months ago:
There are numerous cases showing that free speech is not absolute.
Law is also not necessarily correct.
And that doesn’t address that we’re talking about a private platform.
You’re still wrong, and you’re still wrong in a way that supports the absolute worst of humanity.
- Comment on Why was there a pro-Hitler, Holocaust-denying ad on X? 5 months ago:
Paradox of tolerance comes to mind. If you just put up with people who want to do bad things, they’ll probably do bad things!
And it was considered before. There was a Holocaust. It was decided, via violence and other means, that naziism is not okay.
Also, Twitter is a private platform and is largely free to decide what goes on its platform.
You’re approaching fractally wrong, here.
- Comment on Why was there a pro-Hitler, Holocaust-denying ad on X? 5 months ago:
Better question: what are people going to do in response?
Probably nothing. Disappointing.
- Comment on Pornhub Is Pulling Out of Florida 7 months ago:
The GOP are bad people and should not be in charge of anything.
- Comment on Reddit bans posting UnitedHealthcare shooter’s manifesto 8 months ago:
Seems like a textbook example of why federation is better than something owned by some rich assholes
- Comment on Klarna Stopped All Hiring a Year Ago to Replace Workers With AI 8 months ago:
CEO said he did to prove that AI could ultimately replace all jobs.
This is worthless or even counter productive without like basic income or something.
- Comment on Epic’s holiday sale includes 16 free games this year 8 months ago:
I haven’t looked into how epic works on Linux, but I assume not as nicely as steam. So it’s kind of a non starter now
- Comment on Steam drops Windows 7 and 8 support with the latest client — users told to ‘update to a more recent version of Windows’ to continue gaming 9 months ago:
I switched to mint because ms won’t even let me upgrade to 11 if I wanted to. Other than some initial hurdles installing it, and losing some hd space because I kept windows on the other partition, it’s been fine. Proton and Wine are pretty low maintenance
- Comment on New Steam Agreement gets rid of forced arbitration and waivers for class action lawsuits 10 months ago:
It’s a little hard to square “steam is over charging for games” with “look at all these games I bought for 80% off ($5) off”, but I guess there’s more to it.
- Comment on Most Amazon workers considering job hunting due to 5-day in-office policy: Poll 10 months ago:
I understand fear of retaliation. No one wants to lose their home or go hungry, and it’s not like landlords will give a shit. But I also want management to fear the workers rolling up to their house and hour before dawn. They only have power because we let them.
Well, at least until they have fully autonomous kill drones or something.
But it’s easy to say that from my comfortable home. It’s another to actually get in a truck with your friends and actually shoot a VP in the back of the head.
- Comment on Most Amazon workers considering job hunting due to 5-day in-office policy: Poll 10 months ago:
I’m not as informed as I’d like to be. Rock paper shotgun did an article recently about unions in video game development, which was interesting and might be somewhat broadly applicable: rockpapershotgun.com/from-blizzard-to-bethesda-ga…
- Comment on Most Amazon workers considering job hunting due to 5-day in-office policy: Poll 10 months ago:
Folks should unionize, and then use that collective power to tell “back to office” mandates to fuck themselves to death.
Shut down AWS and let the world burn until management capitulates. It’s not like the soulless husks calling the shots can run the show themselves.
- Comment on Nothing is requiring employees to be in the office five days a week 11 months ago:
What an asshole
More tech workers should unionize so they can say “fuck you” to this kind of idiocy.
- Comment on FTC accuse Microsoft of breaking promise not to raise Game Pass prices after Activision Blizzard deal 1 year ago:
Were there not contractual obligations with clear boundaries and penalties? Surely it wasn’t just a “promise”?
Never should have allowed the merger to begin with. Break them up. Everyone involved in the merger barred from working in the industry for life.
- Comment on Baldur’s Gate 3 will add official mod tools this September, making it even easier to play dungeon master 1 year ago:
When folks bring up Pathfinder in this kind of context, I always think of the blues brothers bit that goes “we’ve got both kinds of music: country and western”
I haven’t played or read Pathfinder 2nd edition in detail, so I can’t speak authoritatively about it. I’m told it does solve a lot of 5e’s problems, but it’s still a close relative. It keeps 1d20+stuff. I think the magic works basically the same, with better codification. My understanding is if you were going to pick just one, Pathfinder 2e is a better game in ways I care about.
Let me take a digression here to talk about what 5e actually does well. A lot of the stuff I complained about - the big random factor, the lack of choices, the missing rules systems - is a plus for some people.
The big random factor means if you build a weaker character, you’ll still succeed often. If you only have 14 strength on your fighter instead of 18, you’ll still do ok at fighter stuff because you can just roll a 15-20 and hit. A casual player isn’t really going to get that they’d be succeeding on a roll of 13, too, if their character was built better. In a deeper system, you might build a character that just isn’t competent. The decision space being so small that you can’t easily fuck up is a plus for some people.
The lack of choices also helps the player who doesn’t want to think or read much. That’s a lot of people. They just want to sit down and do fantasy things. If you say to them “what do you want for your first feat? Power attack is pretty good and opens up more options later, but expertise is good for being defensive. Combat reflexes is kind of useless but opens some great stuff later” their eyes are going to glaze over.
The spells being “just check the box” is a plus for the same kind of player. They don’t want to make tactical choices. They want to cast magic missile. Pew pew pew. That’s it. They don’t want to think very much about tactics. They may be overwhelmed if they have too many choices.
5e does a pretty okay job of removing choices and simplifying things so your drunk idiot friend and still succeed. If that is a requirement for you, Pathfinder 2e probably isn’t going to work as well. It has more choices to make. (Speaking second hand since I’ve only played 1e)
HOWEVER, there are other games. And what kind of game you want to do matters.
People try to cram 5e into any setting and any genre. It’s kind of annoying, honestly. It’s not good for social conflict, for example, but people try to use it for games of courtly intrigue.
Personally, my recommendation is Fate. It’s actually a generic system that’s intended to be used for any game from medieval fantasy to modern day occult to space opera. The rules are much simpler than DND. It feels more intuitive to me, and more like how I think new players imagine RPGs go.
If you want to play a “ex monk bodyguard” who’s “on tour with the band”, you can just write that down and it’s true. You don’t have to wait for five levels for your character to “come online”.
I forgot to mention in my previous post about how DND classes are very coarse. That often makes it hard to get exactly what concept you want into the game. Like if you want to be sneaky and a dirty fighter, but you also want to play music that inspires, you’re awkwardly between rogue and Bard. The system fights against you trying to do that. This just isn’t a problem in Fate or many other systems.
Fate does however require players that are engaged. If your players are wallflowers that phone it in, it’s not really going to sing. If they don’t have any creative input beyond “Dave the fighter”, it’s going to be a bit drab. This is true of many systems, but I feel like people put up with more “i move and attack” from DND.
Fate uses a dice pool, so you don’t have the flat probability problem.
It has degree of success.
It has a few ways to succeed at a cost.
It uses the same basic rules for social and physical conflict. You typically use Fight to hurt someone with your fist, and Provoke to hurt someone with your words. They go on different damage tracks. (Last night in my fate game, a heavy enemy was in a sword fight against an equally skilled swordsman. He switched tactics to attack him with words, and now he had the upper hand)
However, it doesn’t have a fully baked off the shelf magic system in the core srd. It explains some ways magic could work. My game has a mix of “magic via skills and aspects” and ritual (stolen from Unknown Armies). The players like it.
It’s also not a big numbers, levels, and power gaming system. But it’s not going to scratch the power gamer “if I combine wall of force and sickening radiance I can kill anything!” itch.
There are many other games. Blades in the Dark is very popular for heists. It’s close relative PbtA is also very popular. I don’t personally like them as much because they feel more failure and downward spiral than I like, but that’s a taste thing.
The world of darkness games I have a soft spot for. Especially the CofD 2e Games. I played them a lot in college. Dice pool, constrained numbers.
I really don’t like osr games. They tend to have things I don’t like in DND and not the things I do like.
Summary: it depends on what you want to play. Different games are different tools. You can use a hammer to put in screws, but that’s not really the best idea. You can use DND for horror games, but…
Anyway. Clearly I have a lot of opinions and a problem with being verbose. Ask me anything here or via dm.