Accept nothing they offer you without cause. But if you do them a kindness, without thought of recompense, and they offer a gift in return regardless, then it is generally safe and likely beneficial. Generally— exceptions do apply, particularly in the case of user error or suddenly getting really greedy with the gift.

Errr… this applies to the fae, but not customers, I guess. Perhaps the analogy is not perfect then.

Generally, they don’t include intentional ones, or rather, haven’t done so since Super Metroid (and there, only with the wall jumps). When they release new versions of older games they often do so with patches to try to remove sequence breaks. And in new games they try to make sure not to include known older ways of sequence breaking, and sometimes include pretty drastic measures to prevent it.

Speedrunners sequence break anyway, because that’s how they are. But Nintendo gives every indication that they hate this for some weird reason.

Ah, here’s a YouTube link that goes into more detail about it: https://youtu.be/QLWKsugJPy4?si=gsT78aNb3wsQwCax

Will they be obsessive about trying to remove sequence breaks again? For a genre that is has a rabid following expressly because of the existence of sequence breaking, it’s so strange to me how much Nintendo hates the very idea.

Learning a second language AND professionally teaching English to speakers of said language. English is not broken. English is actually much better than many alternatives. We don’t need to worry about noun gender. We don’t have to worry about tones. We have precise ways to indicate number and time. Formality levels are not baked into word construction. The pronunciation of words can generally be inferred from the spelling, despite learning this skill being a little complicated— but that complicated nature even has its usefulness.

We rag on English, but it is by far not the worse out there, not even close. It’s just contempt for the familiar.

From the title, I suspected it was Zach actually, because I know fewer people know that name and would be more likely to need the “dwarf fortress co-creator” label. Tarn definitely should have been named.

I once had a session that became infamous amongst my group at the time. There was a magic forest that only the elves knew the way through, but no elves had come through for a while. One of the players was an elf, and I had given him a note explaining that there was a path featuring a sequence of specific species of trees, oak then spruce then elder, that sort of thing. He was supposed to go in the direction moss grew on said trees until seeing the new species, then look for the moss again, and so on and so forth. I expressly noted on the note that if he didn’t see the exact sequence of trees I gave in the note, “something had gone seriously wrong”.

Of course, the idea was that something had gone wrong and the path through the magical maze forest was screwed up, hence no elves arriving recently. My reason for setting it up this way was so that the elf would lead the party into the woods, he’d try to find the path, realize the path was broken, tell the party, and then they’d get down to the business of figuring out what was wrong and fixing it. You know… start the adventure.

Instead, what ensued was an entire multi hour long session of nothing happening. The elf would lead them. I’d tell him the trees they were seeing, out of order. He’d just keep following the moss, the “path” as he always did. I started emphasizing the wrongness of the trees he was seeing. He kept leading the party. I nudged him harder and harder. He just fucking kept going. The party was confused of course, as the whole path thing was supposed to be an elven secret that they didn’t share. And the elf player just kept ramming the entire party’s heads against the stupid wall for real world hours and I couldn’t stop it until I eventually dropped the 4th wall and flat out said this isn’t working, I’ve told you it isn’t working, please do something else! And then we had to end the session and start again next time.

It was incredibly frustrating in the moment, but it actually worked out well for the game as a whole. Became a running gag, a source of a lot of laughs, and it somehow ended up hammering in the point that something was wrong with the world and forest far more effectively than it might have if it had ended quicker. So good times in the end after all…

But MAN was it frustrating in the moment.

Yet again, censors are afraid of gambling motifs more than actual gambling… loot boxes get a pass as long as the loot box isn’t decorated in a shape similar to a standard playing card (sports trading cards are apparently fine), or of a slot machine.

I will genuinely never understand racism against tribal members or descendants thereof. I know, I know, racism in general is not rational. But this particular form of it still baffles me.

The only possible word that comes to mind is “anticlockwise” used in (some parts of?) the UK instead of “counterclockwise”… but that doesn’t exactly match “diagonally”. Is it the word though?

More like… take the orange, with the peel still on it, into the shower. Dig your fingers straight through the peel deep into the center of the orange, and then rip it open. Smash your whole face into the middle of the orange, shoving the sweet insides into your mouth and not caring that much of it is smearing on your face. Then shower normally… no sticky residue because you’re already in the shower and it washes right off.

A 1-800 number is immune to long distance charges, free to call by anyone in the US— the owner of the 800 number pays any fees associated with the call. Traditionally, 800 numbers are owned by companies in order to sell stuff. (The 1- portion of a 1-800 number means that it’s a long distance call… which was a thing when I was growing up in the 80s/90s, but basically isn’t a thing anymore in the age of cellphones)

The opposite of an 800 number is a 900 number. The person calling a 900 number has to pay, usually by minute, and most of that money goes to the owner of the 900 number. Famously used for phone sex lines.

I have fond memories of it too. Granted, those memories involved being utterly confused as to how to proceed, but also being utterly astonished by the graphics. I distinctly remember it being basically photorealistic to my 9 year old self— going back to play it with an emulator was a bit of a shock (and letdown) compared to my memories of it.

I did beat it as an adult. As a kid I may lot have been able to get anywhere, but it was magical all the same.

The question is how many of those suicides were conducted by jumping off the bridge. And don’t say “they’d just choose another way to end themselves”. Studies and historical evidence shows that making suicide even slightly less convenient to perform actually does save lives. People get fixated on a method that seems easy. When that method is no longer easy, it gives them a chance to not go through with it.

Nah, it’s fully polymorphed, it just cast the spell after it sat down.

I legitimately had my players pull that one on me once. Door into a secret lab disguised as a closet was beyond their skill, warded by powerful magic, etc etc. They looked at the floor plan and saw that the closet protruded from the main wall a bit. “Why not go in through the side?” I hadn’t thought about it. I figured the villain hadn’t thought about it either. A simple pickax later and they were in.

Correct. To be more specific, in Tolkien lore, Bilbo (and later Frodo adding to it, organizing it, and editing it) wrote the “Red Book of Westmarch” which was later translated by the narrator of the books into the Hobbit and Lordnof the Rings. Many (most?) Tolkien fans prefer to frame things this way when discussing the stories, and for good reason— that’s how Tolkien himself viewed the stories. As a translation of something in another language. He was a linguist, after all.

Wikipedia has a good article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_of_Westmarch

Hey guys, is it okay if I don’t hate Jewish people, I just hate people who do Jewish things or otherwise associate themselves with Jewish culture or identity? I mean, if they just stop being Jewish then I won’t hate them anymore!

No. No that’s not okay either.

Narcissism is a spectrum. At the one end, you have people with low self esteem who look to getting reactions from others to feel better about themselves. At the other end, you have people with full on disassociation, that is, a lack of any sense of “self” at all, except from the reactions they get from others. It’s pretty clear Trump is pretty close to the pathological dissociative side of the spectrum.

The reactions narcissists get from others is called “supply”, and each narcissist looks for a specific flavor of supply that fills the void in their life, whether that’s a mild feeling of inadequacy or full fledged lack of self. Some supply is being loved. Some supply is being seen as a villain. Some supply is just being the center of attention. For Trump? It’s pretty clear that his supply is being seen as “successful”.

Narcissistic supply is an addictive drug to narcissists. It gives an instant high— a high of feeling “normal”— and also has instant lows. The moment supply is cut off, the narcissist’s mental dismay returns. Supply also has a problem of levels. A bigger dose of supply feels great, but it ALSO makes any additional supply that isn’t as strong as that one time feel like nothing.

Narcissists are junkies. They need their hit of supply, and will do literally anything to get it. And to get it as big as they’ve ever had it before.

While president, Trump got the biggest hit of supply the world has ever seen. Losing the presidency has lost him that supply… even the attention the news still gives him today isn’t anything like the supply of having the eyes of the entire world on him all the time.

As a junkie, he will do anything to get supply back. He would literally kill to do so. It might yet come to that.

Feels like they took the best ideas from Mario Maker, polished it up to a glowing shine, mixed in some great movement, threw in a metric fuckton of whimsy and joy, and overall made a great game.

It is superglue. That was what superglue was invented for. The only difference between it and what people use for making plastic model kits is quality control for cleanliness.