TTRPGs are quite diverse, but generally speaking they follow a similar formula. Traditionally, play takes place around a table, but even that’s negotiable. Many people play exclusively online these days.

Depending on the system you choose to play, accessories such as minis and battlemats could be optional. However, if you favour a tactical game and want to engage with all the combat rules, they do become more important.

There’s always alternatives though. I don’t keep minis for all my creatures - as a DM, who could afford to? Personally I use paper tokens because they’re easy to whip up and doodle on. Many people use coins, legos, or colored blocks. Anything can stand as a proxy of it’s the right size. There are tales of people who use candy so players can eat what they kill.

Another option, particularly if you go for the online option, is to use a Virtual Tabeletop (VTT). This is software that simulates your table, battlemat, minis, and generally facilitates play. I find them complicated and kind of fiddly, but a lot of people like them.

At the end of the day, you don’t need all that. There’s a concept of play called the Theater of the Mind where players use their shared imagination instead of any accessories. It’s easier when there aren’t a lot of moving parts to keep track of, but if you prefer a narratively focused game then it’s a good way to play.

As far as how to play the game, that’s up to the individual system. However generally speaking you play by having a conversation. The DM describes a situation and then asks “What do you do?” Players then describe their actions. Turn-taking can be more or less rigid depending on the situation. In D&D in particular, turns become much more formal during combat where players take turns in Initiative Order.

Generally speaking, near the start of the rule book (if you have one) there will be an Example of Play. This is usually styled as a transcript of a conversation between players. I always thought those were neat, and they dona pretty good job of showing how a game might play

Getting into the hobby can be intimidating because there are a lot of rules in certain systems, and it can be hard to keep track of them all.

Almost all systems include (or should include) Rule Zero, or Have Fun - the most important rule of all.

If you’re running the game then all rules are optional. As long as everyone is having fun then you can play however you want.

Anyway, I ramble a lot, but I’ve been playing these games for a long time. You’re in for a fun new hobby, good luck getting your group together!

I use a thumbs up reaction as “I acknowledge I’ve read and understood this, but don’t think you require a push notification” so I guess your mileage may vary

I think the intention is that you would read it as “Everything is impossible” followed by “Nothing is impossible”

But then I looked at it again and got “Everything is impossible / Nothing is possible”

So all in all, I think it’s a poorly conceived sign

Calling someone an idiot after having your opinion refuted in a thread about people having thin skin is either some high level satire or proof you have thin skin

I suppose it could be some third thing, but I don’t want to make baseless assumptions

In my experience, the fries are great for five whole minutes before they turn into soggy cardboard and broken dreams

It’s a pretty good five minutes though

That’s the plan, yup

Honestly, that’s tough, but fair. No therapeutic tool is going to be a magic bullet solution for everyone.

My wife struggles with something similar. When we try to walk through an exercise together she thinks it’s about saying that her problems are “all in her head.” For my own outlook, I liken it to thinking that although my thoughts might be faulty, my feelings are valid. But hey, I’m not an authority, I’m just another struggling human trying to make sense of it all.

For what it’s worth, one stranger to another, I think that whatever you’re going through you’re totally valid. I hope you find or have found some relief - goodness knows we’re still looking

I highly recommend Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. CBT is the best medicine I can afford, because all you need is pen and paper.

If you don’t think you can change your circumstance, then you can try to change how you react to it. The core model of the therapy is to analyze your thoughts and look for patterns in which your brain tries to fuck with you. Identifying distortions and fallacies helps to replace your automatic thoughts with more positive ones.

Example:

Thought: I hate my job, everything about it sucks

Distortions: Overgeneralization, All-or-Nothing Thinking, Feelings as Facts

New Thought: I hate certain parts of my job, but I like X part of it

The whole thing only works if you believe in it, and the important thing is that you’re not just putting a sunny face on things that make you feel terrible. You’re working to restructure your thought based on objective truth.

I’ve struggled for a long time with the Sunday Scaries. Sometimes it feels like it’s never going to get easier, and I’m going through it right now, but I know if I take the time to untangle my feelings then things end up easier in the long run.

Good luck out there, partner

A saw a graphic the other day that was comparing the number of frames generated between the 4x and 5x, and people in the comments were saying that the 5x uses AI frame generation to speed things up

People in the know would know that AI is largely hype, and the generated frames probably don’t look as good as if they had been properly rendered

I’d like minimum wage to be able to support my family, so that a job flipping burgers could actually feed us

Failing that, to live as a bunny in a cottagecore tree stump, spending my days slicing up strawberries like they’re roasts, and baking pies with my neighbours

Banana peels take up to two years to decompose, unless they’re in the right environment such as a compost heap where the process speeds to 6-9 months

That’s still lightyears ahead of cigarette butts and plastic bottles, but a lot of people don’t realize how long their trash lasts for

As other people have said, there are definitely bots on the fediverse

In fact, the coolest thing about lemmy for me is that there’s a checkbox in settings to disable viewing any bot users

Although as I understand, users have to self-identify as a bot, so the actually harmful bots probably don’t do that. But I can dream

angry upvote

But honestly, fair. Alien is a 50-year-old movie, so when viewed with a modern lens it might not seem to be anything special.

Part of the legendary status of Alien is just how influential it has been. Before Alien, a horror-scifi movie would be some schlock about flying saucers piloted by men in gorilla masks terrorizing Hollywood. Audiences certainly weren’t expecting a psychosexual thriller about forced oral insemination and mpreg.

And the android! Robots in movies were walking vending machines, and yet the robot in Alien is just some guy until he starts to malfunction. Plus in the context of the franchise, it makes you distrust every single android in each subsequent movie, and might even leave you guessing who else in the cast could be a robot in disguise.

Other movies have done it better since then. We all stand on the shoulders of giants after all. And the funny thing is, a lot of the time when you look back at the movies that spawn the tropes, they don’t seem that impressive because they haven’t been totally refined yet.

I have a soft spot for Alien, it’s my favorite in the franchise. It relies so heavily on practical effects, it’s got those retro-futuristic computers which I adore, and the smart woman saves the day (sort of) after all the dumb men tell her she’s wrong. And yet despite what I just said, I don’t think anyone is actually very dumb, the characters are all quite human and I understand and relate to their motivations.

It’s a movie that feels far more modern than it is. You might even forget that it’s fifty years old until you see that explosive finale in gloriously bad 70’s CGI

I also liked Prometheus. It’s not the best in the franchise but it’s certainly not the worst, and it doesn’t deserve as much hate as it gets in the community

Personally, I like to supplement my knowledge with the occasional book. Like shit, that’s sort of the whole point of books.

I don’t think a book has ever got me started on something new while programming. Like if I want to pick up a new language or framework, I have better luck going directly to the documentation. If I have a specific problem, then I can search online or find a tutorial or something.

Another risk of using a book as the entry point is when those books go out of date and no longer become relevant. Always make sure they’re using the right version of whatever tool you’re using, lest you pick up a book vaguely titled “Learn Python” and discover it’s for 2.7 when you’ve installed 3.11

But as you’ve kind of surmised here, books are great for filling in the gaps in knowledge. They’re also generally speaking written by authors with tons of experience (and perhaps biases) which might tell you why things are done a certain way.

Of particular interest - and caution - are opinion-based books. For example, Clean Code is full of examples that sound good on paper, and then when taken to their extreme are shown to be brittle and cumbersome. I still think the book has some good points, but at the end of the day it’s opinion, and opposing opinions exist for a reason.

So I guess what I’m saying there is books are great, but you shouldn’t follow them dogmatically

Did you get the secret ending where

I did on my first playthrough, thought the game ended far too early before I realized I had gone down an alternate route.

It’s still pretty short though

About two weeks after I moved out of my parents’ place, my apartment was broken into while I was at work.

I had a pretty bitchin’ video game collection and a basement apartment. They broke in through a window and cleaned me out.

Kind of a funny story, I had worked a double shift and was pretty exhausted when I came home. Went straight to the kitchen to make some mac n’ cheese. Came back out to the living room to watch TV with dinner and there was no TV. That was my first clue something was amiss.

I couldn’t stay in that apartment, ended up moving elsewhere before my first month’s rent was up. I felt a bit better when I was in a different apartment, but I guess that feeling of my nest being violated stuck around a bit longer. I kept a bat by the door for a long time, and I still end up triple checking the locks because of something that happened like fifteen years ago.

Metal is like cereal. There’s a thousand varieties, its marketing has vibrant characters, and everyone has their favorite style

This is a reference to Warhammer 40k, a tabletop gaming / book / video game franchise

The Orkz in the setting paint their war trucks red because they believe it makes them go faster. And it does, in fact, make them go faster

Well, that’s once again changed the way I look at things

Easy come, easy go

I’d be okay with that. The key thing is we need to do more than we’re currently doing because the system is broken