• 1 Post
  • 148 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: August 22nd, 2023

help-circle
  • Is it still compatible with all the money I wasted on 3.x Hasbro D&D?

    While technically the answer is “no”, people who emphasize the difference don’t apply the “Rule of Cool” as liberally as I did.

    I re-used all kinds of D&D 3rd Edition resources while switching to Pathfinder.

    Sure, we absolutely shouldn’t just dogmatically use the numbers given in a 3E book with Pathfinder.

    But I didn’t find it terribly hard to whip up Pathfinder monster and NPC number adjustments based on my 3E source books, more or less on the fly.

    Many numbers given are close enough. Most abilities are easy enough to convert in a way that is fun. The Challenge Rating isn’t tuned as carefully, but i find the usual GM toolkit can address that. For example, throwing in a few extras baddies from over the hilldside can scale an encounter up, and awarding the players various story advantages “for good role playing” can scale an encounter’s challenge down.

    If my napkin translation went too badly, I threw “Rule of Cool” at it, and just made sure the players were still having fun.

    I will say, I relegated 3E stuff to filler encounters, just as I do with anything else I homebrew.

    I don’t mind being on my GM toes for a quick encounter, or a short story arc. But I don’t like having something poorly balanced have a recurring role in my campaigns.

    All to say I have used 3E source books liberally in my Pathfinder campaigns, and I’m not sure any of my players have ever noticed.


  • I hate investing

    Mutual Funds / Index funds are your best bet. (Look for descriptive words like “broad”, “mix” or “full market” in the description).

    If you can, pick out one named “target retirement YYYY” with YYYY being within a few years of whatever year you will turn 67.

    It will automatically follow investing best practices based on your current age - agrressive earlier, and very cautious later.

    I’m not familiar with all the details of how it works

    Perfect recipe to get ripped off. (Most people I know say that insurance/investment combined products suck. I’ve heard some disagreement whether they’re just a bad deal, or such a bad deal they ought to be a crime.)



  • I can’t prove anything, but:

    • There’s evidence that billionaires are taking much more than they earn, and that we (everyone else) would be dramatically better off without them (whether we tax them away or… Come to some other compromise.)
    • Billionaires own most media outlets and social media sites, even those these don’t actually make much money compared to everything else the billionaires own. This makes some people ask why they bother…
    • There’s a noticable tendency in billionaire owned media to focus daily on divisive topics. The specific topic changes, but the divisiveness continues.
    • There is history of powerful authoritarians investing heavily in divisive propaganda, primarily to break apart and distract groups of people who could overthrow them.

    What I have laid out is not proof that today’s billionaires are directing their staff to verbally attack minorites at any opportunity.

    But it certainly is something to think about next time a vicious rumor about a minority group comes along.

    Edit: Yes. I do understand that neither men nor women are minorities. But there’s still enough differences to allow pushing a divisive narrative, which I suspect is enough reason for certain motivated people.

    And to the “could just be a shitty set of incentives” argument. Fair enough. It could be. It’s highly suspicious, but it could be.





  • I grew to love Linux because I was hating Windows, I don’t hate Windows because I love Linux. And I don’t want to hate Windows, I wish they were slowly becoming anti-user, but they keep adding (forcing) features that are so unfriendly to the user.

    Yes. If Windows was still like Windows XP, I don’t know if I would have ever switched. It used to be fun, not soul sucking.

    There’s lots of other reasons I’m glad I switched, of course.