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    1. How do you design a dungeon with a lot of backtracking for the purposes of puzzle solving?

      Hi DnD friends, I'm tackling a new DM challenge and could use some guidance. I'm designing a dungeon where humanoid beavers are attempting to awaken a sleeping god. Their efforts get derailed when...

      Hi DnD friends,

      I'm tackling a new DM challenge and could use some guidance. I'm designing a dungeon where humanoid beavers are attempting to awaken a sleeping god. Their efforts get derailed when they offer the god a magical plant that overgrows their entire base, warping the rooms and fusing many surviving beavers into half-plant, half-beaver creatures.

      Since our group is relatively new, I've found that combat can be a bit slow. To speed things up and make combat more dynamic, I want to include environmental elements and traps—things like shelves that can be pushed over or a chandelier that can be dropped on enemies. I hope this will make the players feel more impactful when they pull off creative moves.

      I plan to design a large building that encourages investigation, puzzle solving, and backtracking. My goal is for the players to get familiar with the map before combat, allowing them to discover useful items or environmental features they can take advantage of when enemies appear.

      Since I've never done anything like this, I'm seeking advice on how to approach the design. Are there common pitfalls I should avoid to keep the building fun? How large should the maps be if I want to run this over 3 sessions, each about 3 hours long? And what types of puzzles would fit well in this environment?

      Thanks a ton for your ideas! I’m already feeling like I may be reaching too high, but I’m excited to give it a shot!

      17 votes
    2. What programming/technical projects have you been working on?

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's...

      This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

      16 votes
    3. Midweek Movie Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

      Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

      8 votes
    4. Offbeat Fridays – The thread where offbeat headlines become front page news

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like internet archive, queerphobia and concord. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone...

      Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like internet archive, queerphobia and concord. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was bamboozled.

      But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

      9 votes
    5. Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of September 1

      Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week! Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle...

      Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

      Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

      Rules:

      • No grey market sales
      • No affiliate links

      If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.


      All previous Save Point topics

      If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

      12 votes
    6. A cooperative biological perspective on competition and reproductive success in humans

      Hi, there is a common trend among people in both physical and online circles: the idea that not reproducing means less reproductive success, so it means less "evolutionary success" for the...

      Hi, there is a common trend among people in both physical and online circles: the idea that not reproducing means less reproductive success, so it means less "evolutionary success" for the individual. On an isolated level, the first part is true. However, a lot of people attach value-judgements to this, and wonder whether they are betraying the species by choosing not to reproduce. A lot of intellectual people even consider if they're "dumbing down" the species. And a lot of people think this must constitute some kind of paradox: more intelligence means less reproduction.

      There's a lot to be said about this. First is the good ol' (and kind of boring) idea that evolution is not going toward "higher" beings, but simply a change in inherited traits in a population among generations. However, this is not my point in this post.

      What I want people to consider is how much variety there is between individuals: only 0.1% of DNA differ between two individuals from the species Homo sapiens. This means the other 99.9% is the same. Despite however much media, intellectuals, and individuals might focus on differences between people, the genome is 99.9% the same.

      But what if the 0.1% is so vital that it exerts an outsized influence on the rest of the genome? Well, first of all, at some level it doesn't matter. There is a reason the phrase "evolution by natural selection" is often used, instead of just using the term natural selection. It's because evolution and natural selection are not interchangeable. As stated before, evolution is a change in inherited traits in the population between generations. This includes four forces: selection, mutation, migration, and genetic drift.

      Selection, as is known, tends to preserve traits that are more adapted to their environment. Mutation is the spontaneous origination of a new variation in the genome. Migration is individuals migrating to or out of a population. And genetic drift is random variation that happens between generations due to chance.

      These mechanisms, taken together, determine the change of inherited traits between generations. However vital, natural selection is by far not the only means.

      But-wait?! You were talking about populations, and not individuals. Why?

      Well, it's because evolution makes the most sense at population level. You can't really examine the change of traits on an individual level. It's micro of the micro of the microevolution. Furthermore, at macro level (species to species evolution; speciation) it's populations that evolve, not individuals.

      This is another key takeaway: in evolution, populations matter the most, not individuals.

      Other than the 99.9% sameness in DNA, you can also see this in the genome structure. For the most part, we share the same number of chromosomes, structured in the same way, with genes interspersed at places that are mostly at the same part.

      Supporting this, here are the current known numbers of genes in the genome, according to different sources. There is no evidence that the number of these genes differ significantly between individuals. Sure, the variations (alleles) of the exact content change very often. But not the existence of the genes themselves.

      So, we not only share vast majority of the same DNA, but the way DNA and genes are structured is also almost exactly the same.

      Let's summarize what I've said so far.

      • Population level evolution matters the most in evolution.
      • We share 99.9% of our DNA.
      • We have almost the exact same genome structure.
      • We have virtually the same genes (but not alleles).

      Why have I said all this? Created this topic?

      It's to counter the perspective that is so pervasive in culture, including intellectual spaces. The idea that not reproducing somehow makes you "unnatural", or "against laws of nature". There is, of course, already the ethical rebuttal against these claims: that natural doesn't mean good. However, what I've laid out here is also a different side of nature that is rarely talked about: in evolutionary terms, we are almost the same.

      Following this logic, it can be seen that, even if you don't personally reproduce, contributing to the well-being of the population or the species means you are contributing to the inheritence of 99.9% of your DNA, its overall structure, and its gene structure. After all, your contributions make it so that other people can reproduce, and pass on these commonalities they share with you. You are not, in normative terms, "an evolutionary failure". It can even be argued that, at the current connected level of internationality where populations are quite dependent on each other, and exchange DNA with each other frequently, a global cooperative approach can even be considered the most succesful strategy.

      As with most things in culture, when interpreting biology, the role of competition and dissimilarity is overemphasized, and the role of cooperation and similarity is overlooked, even when it runs counter to a lot of scientific findings. Funnily enough, Peter Kropotkin, who lived most of his life in the second part of the 19th century, realized this. Of course, he didn't have even remotely enough scientific evidence. But looking at nature, he had realized how much the role of cooperation was ignored, due to a fixation on competition. So, this is not a new problem, and my reasoning is not entirely new.

      Further reading on this topic could be made by searching for "evolution cooperation" on the search engine of your choice, and on Google Scholar.

      4 votes
    7. Humble Choice - September 2024

      September 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games. Steam Page Opencritic Steam Recent/All Operating Systems Steam Deck ProtonDB Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy...

      September 2024's Humble Choice is now available with the following eight Steam games.

      Steam Page Opencritic Steam Recent/All Operating Systems Steam Deck ProtonDB
      Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy 82 91/94 Win ❌ Unsupported 🟨 Gold
      Stranded: Alien Dawn 82 82/85 Win ✅ Verified 🟨 Gold
      Coral Island 83 83/87 Win ✅ Verified 🎖️ Platinum
      SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake 70 90/92 Win ✅ Verified 🎖️ Platinum
      Lost Eidolons 70 68/71 Win ✅ Verified 🟨 Gold
      Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles 87 90/92 Win 🟨 Playable 🎖️ Platinum
      InfraSpace N/A 82 Win, Mac 🟨 Playable 🟨 Gold
      You Suck at Parking® - Complete Edition 70 81/88 Win ❓ Unknown 🎖️ Platinum

      Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

      9 votes
    8. Which magazines do you read?

      This about sums it up. I'm looking for good magazines to read. I'm probably going to do a Vogue from Italy, UK, etc, some sort of techy magazines... a wide variety. I've been out of the magazine...

      This about sums it up. I'm looking for good magazines to read. I'm probably going to do a Vogue from Italy, UK, etc, some sort of techy magazines... a wide variety. I've been out of the magazine world for a time, though, so all I seem to know are Conde Nast titles.. which is depressing.

      Stuff available in PDF is ideal, since I'll be pulling these from a library. The magazines don't have to be available in Libby or whatever, though.

      some quick titles I've found that I'll queue up
      • Vogue (intl one)
      • The New Yorker
      • Harpers
      • Cooks Illustrated
      • Bon Appetit
      • Variety
      • Frankie
      • GP Racing (UK)
      19 votes
    9. TV Tuesdays Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

      Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

      8 votes
    10. Woocommerce: Apache or Nginx?

      Edit: Apache OR Nginx? Could someone fix my title - I posted without proofing. My wife is having half decent success with ecommerce. She's doing great on Etsy and eBay, and now her website is...

      Edit: Apache OR Nginx? Could someone fix my title - I posted without proofing.

      My wife is having half decent success with ecommerce. She's doing great on Etsy and eBay, and now her website is starting to pick up.

      It's currently hosted on 20i who pride themselves on being an excellent WordPress and Woocommerce provider, with a half decent CDN. In reality, I think it's pretty shit for what you pay for.

      I'm tempted to either grab a VPS or even go as far as a bare metal at a CoLo with public IP and run the full stack myself. If I do, shall I go Apache or Nginx? I've done both and I'm pretty agnostic. OS would be Debian.

      Before I go to this length though, does anyone know of a fair priced but good performing Woocommerce platform? She's got hundreds of hours already, the plugins and over 300 products listed, so I'm loathe to move to a different solution, however, I'm not ruling it out.

      The reason to not all in on Etsy or eBay is the 25% cut they take of everything. Using a personal site and Stripe payment platform means it's more 1% + 20p for processing.

      Ideas, thoughts and suggestions please?

      15 votes
    11. What have you been watching / reading this week? (Anime/Manga)

      What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was...

      What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

      If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

      9 votes
    12. Is there a digital D&D that is turn-based and go at your own pace?

      I miss playing D&D with a group, but hanging out for 5+ hours at a time every week just doesn't fit into my schedule. However, I was thinking about how some mobile games have handled this - Words...

      I miss playing D&D with a group, but hanging out for 5+ hours at a time every week just doesn't fit into my schedule. However, I was thinking about how some mobile games have handled this - Words with Friends has (had?) a mode where you would get notified when it was your turn, and you could play whenever you had free time. I think there's at least one chess game that operated this way as well.

      I can't imagine many human players would appreciate long waits between moves, when D&D is designed to be very immersive. So I'm being realistic and wondering what options there are as a single player.

      Baulder's Gate 3 is fun, but I don't expect anything with that level of graphical fidelity. And something I could play on my phone would be ideal (but not a dealbreaker if I can't).

      Are there options like this out there, or do I just have to accept that D&D doesn't have a place in my life?

      20 votes
    13. What are your favorite westerns?

      I love westerns and would like to hear about your favorites and thoughts on the genre. Preferably a bit more than just a list of titles. What is your relationship with the western genre and do you...

      I love westerns and would like to hear about your favorites and thoughts on the genre. Preferably a bit more than just a list of titles.

      What is your relationship with the western genre and do you have some favorites you want to recommend?

      Do you prefer spaghetti westerns, neo westerns, animated western or classic John Wayne westerns?

      Does the western genre have a future?

      19 votes