u/Professional-Ad9485

I originally posted this in the Writers group, but I thought I'd post it here because I do find this kind of thing common among fantasy writing.

I think we have all seen it, and I see it also when it comes to media analysis on youtube, which I've kinda stopped watching because I've been finding out quite shallow, and often they talk about subjective opinions and act like it's objective. I'm sure there's probably at least one youtuber out there who says that Half Life is objectively a horrible way to start a game because you spend the first few minutes just on a train unable to do anything.

But I do find these kinds of things extend to stories with more complex theme. Often they'll simplify things and make an interpretation of that simplification and act like that interpretation is the most obvious and correct one.

I guess what's worrying me specifically about my story, is that it's an epic fantasy story with a huge and long history. In this world there's a few sentient species. While humans proliferated the surface of the world, having being taught fire and basic agriculture thousands of years ago by the dragons before they left. Kobolds were discovered underground and while originally thought of animals that could be trained, they were as sentient as people, except basically still hunter gatherers who communicated with a super basic proto-language.

So, there was a slave trade that started, gathering kobolds and using them as slaves. I don't want to get too detailed about the history because this post is already a bit long. But when it was discovered that they basically had human level intelligence and sentience, the slave trade was eventually broken up and a few nations made a pact, basically giving the kobolds reservations of lands to dump them on and basically leave them to their own devices.

There was a long growing animosity that grew between kobolds and humans that culminated into the War of the Dragon where the disparate kobold tribes, united under a single leader named Dracaenas, waged a war of genocide against humanity that was almost successful. The war ended with barely a few million humans surviving with almost 99% wiped out from the continent, and the kobold war machine itself, costing most of the kobolds populations too with their war of attrition.

So, the main story is set 200 years after this war, the single remaining nation of humanity has been rebuilding, paranoidly preparing for the day the kobolds come to finish them off. So the first book is set entirely from the human perspective, and only in later books will we meet kobold characters and see their history from their perspective.

So I guess, One of the things I'm worried about would be people thinking that "kobolds are an obvious allegory for black people" And honestly, I would hate that. Sure you could make the connection with the slave trade thing. But they're not intended to represent any single group or culture, in fact I would say they take more inspiration from the Japanese if anything, and they way they fought during world war 2.

There are black people in this world, and many dark skinned characters as the nation that was reborn from the war was basically anyone who still survived from the genocide of humanity.

I dunno why I'm so afraid of people misinterpreting my work like this, especially if it becomes a popular interpretation of kobolds. But also I feel like such an interpretation would also make implications about me, and that I would do something like make a specific race of "monstrous" creatures as a stand in for a specific ethnicity, and present my themes in such a half assed way.

Do you have a preference one way or the other? Or do you find it mostly situational?

I'm a fairly newish player myself so I don't know some of the deeper meta.

I'm thinking of getting the digital version to play with my housemates, although I love the board game and want to play it more, my housemates find it a bit complicated. So I feel like the digital version would be a great way to play it with them as it knows the games rules for you.

So, it does say that the Switch version allows up to 4 players locally (as in, on the one console). But I wonder how that works as you have a hand of cards and everyone is able to see your cards on your turn?

So I was reading about the car crash in Thailand where 11 monks were killed when an out of control vehicle plowed into a Buddhist procession. And there was a section in it about a female nurse having broken the Buddhist taboo of not allowing physical contact with a woman.

And I started thinking like... How did it happen that all our major religions are very sex-negative. None of the major religions in the world say, see sex as a holy act. It feels like sexuality is considered taboo in like... All of them.

So. I fully grasp Wolfenstein 3D and it's raycasting technology, and how that works.

But with Doom, there's some things I'm having trouble understanding about it's verticality that I don't really get despite (I think) it's based around not too dissimilar technology.

But it's about line of sight in it's verticality. When a monster shoots at you, and they're on a much higher plane, if they're so high that the floor blocks their line of sight, and the shot hits the ground.

But how does the game work this out if it's not actually a 3D space? My closest guess is that with each shot the game applies some kind of Pythagorean calculation? Like, the height of that plane might not be real, but that height has a number value applied that the game can plug in for each shot.

idk I'm shooting (lol) in the dark, if anyone actually knows some of the secret tricks John Carmack put into the game to make it as groundbreaking as it was.

I've experienced, as both a player and a DM, where you're giving the players some choices. But often times, not only are the players not fully aware of the choice and it's full repurcussions. But sometimes they're not aware of all the choices available, like there might be one choice of which is, obviously the correct choice, but in the player discussions they don't seem to be aware of that particular path?

How do you, as DM, try to guide your players, but also not make them feel like they're being guided or pushed towards a choice.

https://www.chess.com/live/game/169831208510

When I figured there was no way I could win I was like "f it, I'm gonna go for draw by repitition"

Was told this was bad sportsmanship.

So, there's a few quality of life things that I kind of miss from IPhone. Like the YouTube app runs better on iPhone even though Google also owns YouTube. Strikes me as a bit odd that it runs worse on the phone produced by the same company that owns it.

But the unlocking of the phone. Oh my lord. Facial recognition is so poor, I legit can't recall it actually working, especially how the iPhone was almost magical in how well it read your face in the dark, or with sunglasses.

Fingerprint scanner. I decided to scan thumb, index, and middle on each hand. And it just doesn't work 90% of the time no matter what finger I use.

And then the PIN. So with the iPhone I just entered my PIN and it would unlock, with this I have to press the enter button to get in. A minor gripe, but it just adds an extra unnecessary step to an already infuriating process.

I don't mean to come here just to complain, there's a lot I like about this phone. But just the act of unlocking the phone is such a downgrade from my prior experience.

Listen, I get that they hired an actor to do his voice lines and a singer to do his singing. It's a thing as old movies had singing in them. Older movies used to have a different voices for the singing and the dialogue.

But with those they tended to sound kind of similar and you had to keep your ear out. And I think an attempt was made to find people who at least sounded similar.

But in Cyberpunk 2077. I feel like the logic behind it was. "I'm going to get the singer of this band because I like Dennis Lixzen and Refused and/or their sound fits the vibe I'm going for. And I'm going to cast Keanu Reeves as his voice because I really like Keanu Reeves and/or he's really popular and his casting will add some star power."

But they don't sound ANYTHING alike, they sound like completely different people at different stages in their lives.

So yeah, does it bother anyone else? I find it always kind of takes me out of it when the game has him singing next to him talking like in the flashbacks.

EDIT: Lots of comments think I'm talking about their accents. Which I know that people sing in different accents. I used to love Cest La Vie by B*Witched when I was a kid and there's a whole section where they break their singing and talk in their native Irish accents. Yes I know people sing with different accents I'm very much not talking about accents.

So follow up to this situation: https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1tv98vc/player_had_a_tantrum_and_left_the_game_im_sure_we/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I read through a lot of the feedback, and have been in contact with both the players. The Druid was ready to quit (again. They wanted to quit in the previous campaign when another person DMing who's now playing a joke character), because of a frustration of having little agency over how the story went. And often time the person who plays the Monk has a tendancy to make decisions for the party, an impulsiveness that I kind of understood stemmed for a disliking when the pace of the story gets bogged down and wanting to move things along (they have a family so time is short).

So. I think with discussions with the Monk and Druid player today, I think we're just going to scrap all the events that happened after the party took the unconciouss donjon outside. And we'll have a proper out of character group chat, likely with everyone involved. Of how we can resolve the conflict in a way that leaves all parties satisfied.

I have a few ideas to suggest. Some of which involve still going with Donjon being killed, and someone in the previous chat brought the idea of a kind of "rivalry" mechanic which sounded interesting.

I'm a part time student so I only do 2 units a semester. (So being a part time mature age student, I have lots of stuff especially with my family and work that I have to fit around uni)

Last year in semester 1 I failed both my units, PHY20004 (Optics, Relativity, and Subatomic Physics) and MTH20014 (Matrices, Vector Calculus, and Complex Analysis)

I'm repeating them in this semester. Thought I was managing it, but then on my first midterm in MTH20014 (which comprises of only like 3 questions, with various points given for the working out.) there was 1 question that I hadn't prepared for and I didn't even know how to answer it, and of course because I didn't get full marks on the other questions, I only ended up getting a 25% on my first mid term.

I had a bit of a break down after that, missed a few classes and fell further behind, second midterm is happening today and I just, can't see myself getting anything better than 25%.

While I know I'm gonna pass PHY20004 (unless I stumble at the final exam again, which I will try really hard not to) I can't see how I can catch up with MTH20014, even if I get a passing grade on the final I'll have to get a super high score to pass.

Would it be better to withdraw now and put all my focus on the remaining unit and try again next year, or see it through to the bitter end and try to get as much knowledge as I can to reapply next year.

Third times the charm, as they say.

So I found out the other day that you could check your rating as a passenger and saw it was 4.79. and I thought "That's not bad" seemed to be on the higher scale to me. Which makes sense. I don't ever have trouble, I'm nice, polite, always give a 5 star rating unless something is super off. Sure I'm not a great conversationalist but that's just me personally.

But then I googled it, and apparently 4.79 is considered a bad rating and apparently it's just below the cut off for most " good" drivers who won't give a lift to anyone below 4.8.

Am I misreading or am I getting it right? mathematically it doesn't make sense that anything below a 4.8 on a scale of 5 would be considered bad.