Super late, but I figured it out because it happened again in a more recent comment. Lemmy seems to automatically change the links to https instead of http, even when http was explicitly included in the url. Somehow, xkcdsw is a completely different site on https than on http. If you copy the link into an external browser and remove the s, the link works as intended. I can only assume this is a behavior of the lemmy app(s), which is why it didn’t affect some users. Were you using jerboa?

You need to prompt your party to roleplay as non-idiots and think through their solution step-by-step. Of course, it’s possible your party is also running an outdated model.

I was going to say that’s actually a G K Chesterton quote, but it turns out it’s more complicated than that. Neil Gaiman himself said it was from Chesterton (when quoting it at the start of Coraline), but he wrote it from memory and didn’t double check, so the original is worded differently. At least, that’s how my quick googling claims the paraphrase happened. The misquote is pithier than the original so… is it now a Gaiman quote, even though it originates as an attempted Chesterton quote?

As far as I can tell, the passage he was thinking of was:

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

• G K Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles (1909)

they probably fell into an empty enclosure one day and the zookeepers just rolled with it and put up a sign

Are capybaras as chill as their reputation suggests, or is that more a feature of cases that are used to captivity? If the memes/images/videos are to be believed, I’d expect to be able to just wander up to one in the wild and have it respond like a well-socialized pet dog.

For those like me who are not familiar with rapper feuds or sex offender locator apps, this is the rapper Drake’s house shown as containing many registered sex offenders in an image posted by Kendrick Lamar. Just to save some googling.

balls mama
gottem

joe

I see a lot of cages there - is Scootaloo your only pet that can’t fly?

I think the modern pushback comes from people who get their understanding of technology from science fiction. SF has always (mis)used AI to mean sapient computers.

“Inconvenience” would be the verb for causing an inconvenience. So in the sentence you’re going for, “inconvene” would have to be replaced with the passive “be inconvenienced” (“we’ve gotta be inconvenienced and grovel to google a bit”). I don’t believe we have a separate word for “endure an inconvenience”, although it seems like the kind of thing some languages might have a single word for. Stylistically I’d probably restructure the sentence to “we’ve gotta put up with the inconvenience” rather than just using the passive verb, but yeah.

I think you’d most often see this verb in the stock phrase “Sorry to inconvenience you”.

me too, thanks

why is that

it is 🙁d upon

what’s your favorite text editor

I can’t find a book called Limits to Growth by Alvin Toffler. Were you thinking of the Donella Meadows et al book of that title, or some other book by Toffler? Or has my google-fu just failed me? If the latter I’d love a link or something so I can check it out.

missed opportunity to mention to volume of a pizza pie with radius z and depth a

For those wondering, this is a reference to the lyrics of A Day In The Life by the Beatles, which starts “I read the news today, oh boy”

I believe when they say “Greek word for ass”, they mean ass as in donkey, not anus.

όνος - donkey, ass, burro

When you say 2.5, do you mean 3.5? 3.5 was an actual edition, still widely played (what I started on, even though 5e existed at the time). I’ve heard some people refer to late 2nd edition (I think particularly after the combat and tactics optional material) as 2.5e, but only in a very informal sense as an acknowledgment of how much one of those later supplements changed the game. Second edition is a hard sell for a modern audience, as you have to think about THAC0, to-hit tables, weird saves vs specific things, etc. It’s what Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 run on.

3.5 is much more intuitive than second edition in terms of its core mechanics, but had a huge amount of supplementary material released for it. It’s still a detailed and crunchy system, and usually if you hear people talking about crazy character builds where they figured out how to become omnipotent at level 5 or used metamagic to wipe out a 200 mile radius with a level 4 spell, they’re probably talking about 3.5. It’s also what pathfinder is based on - you can basically play pathfinder 1 and d&d 3.5 if you’ve learned to play one of them, they’re not identical but they’re closer than any actual editions.

5 is much less crunchy than 3.5 or 2, and easier to learn, while still having good systems in place. I’ve heard it referred to as “everyone’s second favorite system”, on the basis that it’s so well-rounded (of course, in practice it’s plenty of people’s favorite or only system). I think it leans a bit more on dungeon master (referee) interpretation/judgment, which might make it less viable for a video game, but clearly Baldur’s Gate 3 works just fine using it. I’ve been curious since BG3 was announced how they went about fully mechanising parts of it, but haven’t yet gotten around to checking it out.

If you’re new to tabletop RPGs and just looking for inspiration and only looking at one system, 5 is probably your best bet - and if you run into part of it and wonder how this could translate to a computer context, you can always check what BG3 did for reference.

Actually, now that I’ve said that though, 4e is worth mentioning too. It’s usually not in the discussion for most tabletop group discussions, because of how video gamey it is, but a) that works in your favor here, and b) it does introduce some good stealable ideas, in addition to the video-gamey combat overhaul. Notably skill challenges and minion-type enemies. Another comment already gave a good discussion of 4e though, I just wanted to acknowledge that it’s a decent contender in spite of what I said about 5e being your best bet. The only reason it’s an afterthought is that it’s sort of the black sheep of the d&d family for tabletop purposes.

Edit: you know what, just since I ended up addressing every mainline numbered edition except 1, I’ll give a quick note on that. It’s basically 2 but worse. The change from 1st to 2nd was a much smaller change than all the other ones, so people basically treat them as the same thing. But 2nd edition is the finished one. It’s a bit more complicated than that and there’s a few other versions from around that time, plus modern attempts to replicate the feel of that time, but I feel like for your purposes nothing before 3.5 is likely to be worth thinking too hard about.

I’m open to follow-up questions if any part of this rambling comment needs elaboration or clarification. I intended to just clarify the 2.5 vs 3.5 thing but it kind of got away from me.