The secret is to not work from what you’d like to do, but to work backwards from what your players want to do.

Seriously, throw out all the prep you have that isn’t landing, and just ask your players what kinds of things they want to do. Then, make stories inspired by the actions or accomplishments they want to undertake.

… This does require that your players have some idea of what they want to do, though. If you have checked out or uninvested players, there’s essentially nothing you can do I’m afraid.

So now I will soapbox to the players reading this: Your job is to be invested in the game. If you don’t put energy into being invested, you’re not fulfilling your side of the arrangement at the table.

A tale that is perpetually dark in tone becomes tiresome very quickly. It needs to feature the occasional ray of light for contrast and to create a sense of hope. Monsters and other terrors must be offset with creatures that are kind and lovable, giving the characters even more reasons to stand against the darkness. Here are a couple of ways to add glimmers of light to a tragic tale:

• In a land as dreary as Barovia, take the time to describe the occasional scene of beauty, such as a pretty flower growing atop a grave.
• Make sure that the heroes have contact with NPCs who are honest, friendly, and helpful, such as the Martikovs in Vallaki or the Krezkovs in Krezk.

-Curse of Strahd, Introduction. Marks of Horror. 2016.

But there are people who identify as left-wing who will support China and Russia while downplaying their authoritarianism.

That’s not something being invented as a boogeyman. Anyone can go to lemmygrad.ml right now to see it in action.

Most of that is being fixed by dilating the amount of damage output that players can output in 5e in a variety of changes in OneD&D.

My playtests have had really gripping & close fights, even with people optimizing their hearts out.

I’ve seen Sealioning used quite a bit in a particular Lemmy instance that would self describe themselves as Pro-Russia & Pro-China, as a way of shutting down discourse between people who disagree with them. There are people who disagree with a particular narrative, and they’re discounted immediately for wanting to know how someone would arrive at a pro-Russian & pro-China position.

Also they’ll just “whatabout!” and change the subject whenever unassailable critiques of these regimes come up. As if its is only possible to hold outrage in a single direction at a time.

I’ll have you know I’m capable of disliking EVERYONE mentioned in a given conversation.

Yeah and as smart as anyone is, they aren’t right all the time. As much as you can agree with his messaging, it’s important to critically assess everything said, regardless of who is saying it.

Thanks! They look quite slick and have a lot going on. Particularly the void dragons you sent my way.

Each would be more or less perfect for a single-monster encounter, as they are dense with fairly novel mechanics.

Many people think that the WotC statblocks are a bit too boring, but I consider them a good entry point for new GMs. This is clearly a nice way to up your game.

Cheers!

Can someone give a good example if what makes these books good? I’d love to see a single great example of the level of quality that these books bring.

For the people who have a lot of hours on this game, how well does it play for co-op?

My spouse and I actually dated doing Star Wars the Old Republic co-op, where we could play two different characters going through bespoke personal quest lines while being able to help each other out on their journies.

How easily could we get that experience with this game?

It’s one of those things where I look at it, and say ‘wow that sucks… But you can’t argue with the results damn, can we workshop a better version of that?’

Murdoch doesn’t own EVERY newspaper.

But yeah Murdoch media is fucked.

China doesn’t aim for global hegemony

You are gliding over every single time that Xi Jinping said, out loud, that this is the long term goal? Why wouldn’t you believe him?

Yeah, they couch it carefully, but it’s quite clear, from the China #1 propaganda, that China doesn’t want to uplift anyone else, they want to use their soft power to make neighboring countries dependent on them. They’re following the playbook laid out by Western companies in the 20th century, but organizing it with State controlled corporations.

And as for Singapore, there’s a lot of propaganda from some right-wing Supply-Side economists that mischaracterize that country as being an ideal Capitalist state, while gliding over how the State controls most of the means of production. It isn’t an ideal system, it has many inequities. But it’s an example that serves as a surprising counterpoint to the argument that only free markets can thrive & survive in global capitalism, and components of it could be useful for looking for solutions to the issues with capitalism. Right wing economists do this, so they don’t have to confront how incorrect their argument that Capitalism cannot be reformed with the State taking a direct role in the economy without disaster.

You say that like Russia isn’t Capitalist as all get out.

The only good counterpoint to Capitalism in the modern global landscape is Singapore, and possibly China if you’re feeling extra spicy and support their version of global hegemony.

The modern Russian state is a Fascist Autocracy propped up by Oligarchs. Y’know, what Trump likes.

Edit: Actually I’m going to add Slovenia to that as well, as I had a great time learning about that Jewel of a Country before the Delta Variant absolutely wrecked it.

When I was there in 2018, it was a fantastically eye-opening example of a successful socialist state.

But that’s where my knowledge end on counterpoints to Capitalism, in its varied forms. I’m sure more exist. I’m not an academic on this subject.

I didn’t hand curate them, I just went to google and copy/pasted in a demonstration of the lowest amount of effort I could do to find articles that dispute the narrative here.

Most of these countries have free press, btw. And some articles blame Russia, others give credence to the possibility that Ukraine could have done this, but with the realistic perspective that it’s basically impossible to know.

In fact, reading those stories makes me incredibly skeptical of anyone who doesn’t show uncertainty on this topic. Look at that, I just changed my own view by researching a bit more.

I can only urge you to diversify your news intake with non-social media sources, as social media is corrosive to media literacy.

Additionally here’s this article that pointedly refutes many of the main claims of Seymour Hersh’s article.

https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe

Also there’s only one anonymous source on Seymour Hersh’s article.

It’s plausible that the USA had a part in it, but hardly conclusive.

Seymour Hersh is a conspiracy blogger??? You want to tell me all the previous times when he was correct like was also conspiracy theories? My Lai, Watergate, CIA support for Pinochet, Israel having nukes, Abu Ghraib, etc. ???

I’ll fully admit that I hadn’t read the entire thing or did due diligence on the sources prior to my comment. That’s a mistake I just did, and I will not be removing my previous comment, but striking it out with an added a correction as an abject lesson & to walk back the clearly erroneously statement. This is a bad habit of mine when I see vitriol online, particularly when it has a flavor of Russian state Media talking points.

Thank you for pointing me to this guy’s blog. That is very promising to me, someone who likes to be informed by people who do their due diligence. (Hold up one more time! Here is a article that I found that refutes Seymour Hersh’s assertions. Also, we only have a single anonymous source of S. Hersh’s claims. https://oalexanderdk.substack.com/p/blowing-holes-in-seymour-hershs-pipe) I don’t like the idea that the US did this on Ukraine’s behalf, but that doesn’t make me think that Russia is the good guys, actually. The number of things that Ukraine and the United States would have to do to outweigh the atrocities that Russia has perpetrated, especially in starting this war for reuniting ‘Greater Russia.’ Not for standing against Capitalism, which is alive and well in the de facto fascist-oligarchy that is the modern Russian state.

This isn’t “horrible cycle of retribution”, this is ongoing imperialism and specifically USA efforts to maintain their global hegemony in the capitalist system - an infinite growth in finite planet. And even the hot part of that war wasn’t started by Russia, it was started by Ukraine attacking Donbas in 2014, Russian intervened in that in 2022.

Russia horribly mischaracterized a political pressure cooker, and made it tremendously worse by invading. You are repeating that purposeful propaganda in this moment. Protecting ‘ethnic russians’ was never the goal.

I suppose next you’ll tell me that the Crimean peninsula vote to join Russia was above board?

lmao you actually think the BBC is incredible?

Not particularly, they are heavily influenced by the party in power that gets to selectively enforce biased news laws. That was in the order that Google gave it to me with no reordering. BBC is B-Tier for North American news because there is less impetus for political bias. I usually go the Associated Press and The Globe And Mail.

My comment was more to how easy it is to find many news stories covering this from a multitude of perspectives.

And for the record, yes, I do believe that journalistic standards upheld by credible institutions are safeguards against specious speculation and lies. You can phrase that however you’d want, but the conceit of that statement is true.

Some of those links are broken, but I’m getting the jist. Not all those links support your position, tho. Many that are not Russian news orgs are pointing the blame at Russia.

The politico article makes sure to point out that Russia is placing artillery in a position very close to the nuclear plant. That’s Bad, and inviting disaster.

The first link is a conspiracy blogger. this is patently not true! Leaving this up as an abject lesson in doing a little more reading before reacting to reflexive vitriol. I don’t particularly like that Ukraine shot at a nuclear power plant, but…

There is no real great answer to the question of “how do you behave when someone as a boot to your throat?” This war, started by Russia, is monstrous, in no small part because of the horrible cycle of retribution.

I didn’t know that Ukraine actually fired on Russian installations near a nuclear power plant. Thank you for informing me. I don’t like it, but I blame Russia for daring Ukraine to attack it.

You are probably getting too much of your news from social media.

I beg you: find news organizations that you can judge as credible, and go directly to them for news.