Very well stated, and echoes my sentiment exactly.

My game time is precious to me and sitting with that feeling of failure while I waste time just getting back to zero feels bad to me. I’d rather be, you know, making some sort of progress.

It’s a gorgeous game, very lovingly crafted. But I would cheer for some built in accessibility options akin to the most recent Ninja Gaiden that let me dial in the experience I want.

Boring straight white cisgendered man with regular hair and no facial piercings here: stop trying to normalize your shitty opinions by pretending like everyone thinks them. We don’t.

Beans and rice is the real answer here, +1 to this

Lots of meals are cheap but few will also fill you up.

As stated in the article for anyone who missed it: it’s still available on GOG and is DRM free there. It’s also currently discounted to $4.99, so if anyone is worried about having (legal) access to the game then that option is still available (for now).

I use bookmarks for that. All the browsers I use support them.

For those unaware: RSS is still a thing and still works. You don’t need fancy platforms and algorithms to follow sites that post stuff you care about. Just an RSS catcher.

On F-Droid, Capy Reader does a great job and supports full article downloads to circumvent the sites that only put previews on RSS.

This is a good take. I remind players all the time that even though I’m GMing I’m a player too. I’m just playing a slightly different game. I’m here to have fun and enjoy myself, not babysit.

For my personal games I am as well.

“Make friends with gamers, don’t make gamers out of friends” is an old tabletop adage that took me a long time to really learn.

For public stuff the best that can usually be mustered are safety tools and clear guidelines. But (rarely, thankfully) some people are just there to sabotage.

I GM public games and games at conventions, so sometimes it still crops up. People don’t always make it readily apparent ahead of game time that they’re going to pull shenanigans like this.

My fix has always been: that’s fine! They go off on their own adventures. Now please roll a character that’s going to play the game we’re running here tonight.

I run gritty low magic games with death and safety tools. Which group do I join!?

I can’t speak to journaling because it has never worked for me, but as a fellow anxiety-haver now approaching his 40s: please talk to someone if you’re able.

You’ll find every reason and excuse not to, you’ll tell yourself it’s not that bad. You’ll minimize your problems. You’ll self-medicate and self-therapize without even realizing it’s what you’re doing.

Proper medication and/or therapy is absolutely critical and life-changing. Please don’t wait to go, it’s genuinely worth the hassle and effort it requires.

Texan here. This is all correct.

I have a startling revelation. Upon closer inspection it was a piece of wood.

I have lied to you all.

I truly wish I had the mental fortitude to push through the issues I have expressing myself to just, via sheer willpower, precisely describe my emotional state while in the middle of grappling with it.

An easy way to say “I’m not, I’m not sure what is wrong, and explaining anymore than this is going to somehow make it worse in my mind. What I really want is for you to pick up on the fact that I’m struggling and just be supportive but explaining all that in this moment is overwhelming.” Even getting that out can be difficult in the moment because internally I haven’t unkinked the knot enough to figure it out. Sometimes I’m not yet aware that I’m not okay.

So “I’m fine” comes out.

Thankfully my wife is very used to paying attention to the nonverbal cues of her husband (me) after many years of happy marriage. Communication is so much more than just words. If you’re in tune enough to ask then it’s safe to assume something is up.

Sorry your relationships have been with people like me. Hope you find that right person for you :)

I’ve been on and off with Linux for about 15 years and just want to counter some of the people trying to troubleshoot or criticize to say: it can be really tough.

We need our computers to work and we expect things to function correctly.

I’ve used dozens of distros over the years. I was a super early Arch adopter, mained Gentoo for about three years, ran my own BSD server for programming projects, and still maintain several small home Linux servers. And even I sometimes want to pull my hair out trying to get semi-new hardware working right in my distro of choice. I spent three hours today fighting Nvidia and sound drivers and eventually just had to give up on that machine after being told that what I want just flat out isn’t supported in Linux on the hardware I have.

Take a breath, set it aside until you’re ready to take another crack at it, and know that it’s a journey. You’ll get there or the software will catch up and meet you halfway. No shame in being frustrated :)

Not mine, but my sister accidentally kicked a tall floor lamp over in her sleep. It landed right next to the glass aquarium her hamster was in. It had one of those really bright incandescent 100w bulbs.

Poor little guy cooked to death like a Thanksgiving turkey.

IDDQD

Unfortunately options are becoming increasingly limited. My guess is that they’re making more money cramming in ads for people that tolerate it than they are losing money from people who refuse it.