This is a bit off topic, but it made me nostalgic. My first argument on reddit over a decade ago was with someone, either a scalper or a contrarian, trying to argue that scalpers provided a useful service that made things more fair, rather than assholes creating scarcity so they could profit selling a solution to a problem they themselves create.

So yeah, I hope they all get fucked on this one, too.

/u/DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca is right on the money. Mana paces the game, so anything that can break that is super good. In an otherwise even matchup, if one player has a Lotus while the other doesn’t, that can easily make the game. It’s not going to win the game in and of itself, but it’s a huge enabler to play the thing that will win you the game, before your opponent can reasonably do anything about it.

On top of that, it’s literally good in all decks. It’s been banned in every format besides Vintage, where it’s restricted to one (and not including casual/fan formats). It had to be banned partly for power reasons, but also because it makes deck-building less diverse. There’s no deck that wouldn’t want a Lotus if it could have one, much less four.

It’s also part of the Reserved List. After WotC overprinted cards, they essentially promised not to reprint certain ones. I think it’s a dumb decision, but they’ve annoyingly stuck to it (and players are worse off for it). Black Lotus is on that list. And it was alreadly limited in printings, because it was a rare card, and a bit of a design mistake.

It’s also simply an iconic card. Despite being a design mistake, it’s a major part of Magic history, and gets referenced all the time. To some extent, it’s famous for being famous. That makes it the biggest prize for collectors.

So, all this together, it has an incredibly high demand, a very limited supply, and no indication of a reprint anytime soon.

So I printed off a proxy at a professional card printer for 30¢. :)

I hate how relevant this question is in so many situations.

“If you’d rather play D&D, are you willing to DM while I recharge?”

In my group, yes. :| We actually have plenty of players willing to run games.

That said, they’re also willing to try out new games, so it all works out just fine. :)

This is especially true with generic medicines.

The cheapest I can get Claritin in my nearest supermarket is 50¢—$1.12/pill.

The store brand can be as low as 7¢—37¢/pill.)

The CostCo version is 2 or 3¢/pill.

All of them are the same. 10mg of loratadine, highly regulated by the FDA.

They can differ with inactive ingredients, so maybe you’d like a syrup or something from a name brand. But it legally has to be the same active ingredients, in the same amounts, in the same forms.

Somewhat off topic, but the names of both the publisher and the developer are also used by unrelated tabletop game companies. Hero Games makes the Hero System tabletop RPG, and GameScience (no space, so there’s a difference) make dice. It threw me for a loop.

Fair point. I just don’t like the move, and don’t want to support a company doing it. Even putting that aside, it really makes me worried that they’re at the point that they’re trying to ride on their reputation while increasing profit margins. It makes me think that, if I buy their newer models, they’re more likely to cheap out but charge more.

Same. I’ve been thinking of replacing the cheap immersion circulator we have, and was going to go with Anova. This blatant enshittification is enough to make me look elsewhere.

I think part of it is that meme discussions are just a great place to actually talk shop about D&D.

Back on reddit, the vast majority of D&D subs were flooded with fan art and very little discussion. There were DM subs, but those obviously left out players. I loved /r/rpg, but that place was also a refuge for people who don’t want to talk about D&D and only D&D all the dang time. (And even if I’m mostly over D&D, I still like D&D in theory, if not always in practice). So… that kind of left /r/dndmemes as, unexpectedly, one of the few places to get in-depth discussion about all kinds of RPGs and experiences from around the table.

Oof. I wouldn’t like that at all. I’m already bothered with how many player powers just shut off certain parts of the game. Also putting it on the monster side seems like it will make the game an arms race of things not mattering.

It’s definitely something that’s a part of newer D&D, though it’s debatable when it started. It was inarguably a part of 4th edition, I think it was here by 3rd edition, and there’s even a case to be made that 2e was headed in that direction with some of the supplements.

Anyway, your dad was right. :P During 2e, that was still a big part of the game. It’s part of the differentiation between “old school” and “new school” D&D. Whatever I think of any particular edition, I think both approaches are rad for different reasons. :)

It’s just the mismatch of expectations that would be a problem. It sucks to die because you were expecting another epic set piece battle, and it also sucks to try to come up with a clever solution to avoid an encounter just to end up not doing much or getting railroaded.

Yeah, we had a near-TPK with our group recently. The rogue picked a lock and opened a door, which triggered a comical amount of explosives. We dealt with the consequences, but it was frustrating because it just kind of came out of nowhere. It didn’t seem to be that kind of campaign, y’know? Nothing remotely like it happened in months of play up to that point.

…so I was kind of reading my own experiences into this. :P

Alright, gotcha. Just taking it as a launch point for discussing the game.

Plus apparently situations like this happened in CR recently, so I thought it was about these kinds of situations in general.

Just to get it out of the way, I don’t watch CR, so I don’t know if this is a specific reference, and am just speaking about D&D in general. :)

Kind of inevitable with most D&D games. If you design adventures around having a series of more-or-less balanced encounters, almost always combat, where player characters are expected to be stressed but not generally killed the vast majority of the time… both the players and their characters are going to have the expectation that they can just do that.

So you need to manage those expectations. Make it clear up front, and either run the game so that death is a real threat more of the time, or find other ways to make it crystal clear when it is.

(Or just don’t make things lethal and find other consequences for failure. Or whatever you’d like, my point is just to get folks on the same page.)

It’s really the crux of a lot of issues with D&D, from table problems to game problems to publisher problems.

And as a player who wants to do that too, I keep in mind that the DM is also playing the game and wants to have a good time.

Huh. I kind of do this in between sessions. I like to read a few pages, maybe a chapter or two, from whatever rulebook, just so I’m constantly brushing up on the rules.

As others have said, “in-ear monitors.” However, it’s not technically about the quality. Earphones sit in the outer ear, while IEMs go at least a little bit into the ear canal. They do better with blocking out sound, which is better for audio quality, but sometimes you want to be able to hear things around you, so it’s a matter of context.

Also, while audiophiles can get wild with it (and there’s a lot of snake oil in that area), I just got some Salnotes Zeros for <$20 and they’re great.

even apart from audio quality, Spotify is just plain terrible as a music library.

For someone who lives in playlists, it might be fine. But I like to pick and choose albums and songs, and be able to sort the whole collection on the fly. Spotify, and unfortunately a whole bunch of the competition, will have three separate lists for “liked” songs, albums, and artists. Only want to save the studio tracks, and not the demos and live versions? Fuck you, you can like the album or not, it’s all or nothing! And the special edition is the only version we have! enjoy the solid hour of shittier versions of the songs you actually wanted!

I do appreciate the fact that the Cybertruck was so clearly designed by someone who had no idea how to design a car, and that it’s Musk’s pet project. It really drives another nail in the coffin of the idea that he deserves all the credit for the work his companies do.

Then again, his most die-hard supporters draw no distinction between ownership and labor. They’re also somehow able to look at a Cybertruck and think “Wow!” rather than “Wow, is this some kind of a joke?”