When I was in elementary school, I found some Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books at a yardsale. I read through them, brought them to school, and played through a basic campaign with some friends. Since then, I haven't met anyone interested in pen-and-paper RPGs. I still hope that I can one day convince someone to play with me, but I don't even know which system I should try to learn. There are now so many different editions of D&D, in addition to countless alternatives and endless arguments over the merits of each.

Whatever system I decide to learn, I will need to invest time and energy into learning and teaching the game to others, and I'll most likely be the DM, so I'd like to choose one that won't be too difficult for beginners to get into. While I enjoy exploring interesting game mechanics, I think the idea of creating an interactive adventure story or a world to explore with friends is what attracts me the most. The Fate system sounded interesting, but I had a hard time understanding the core rulebook. I've recently read short summaries of several other systems that seem like they could be fun and not too hard to get into, such as Index Card RPG, Shadowdark, Tiny Dungeon, Five Torches Deep, Fantasy AGE, and Creative Card Chaos; but I can't afford to read through each of them and seven editions of D&D to determine which one is most suitable for me.

Does anyone have any advice on how to evaluate my options or a suggestion for a good one to start out with?

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.

I am reading Never Split the Difference right now, and while the book has a few stereotypical "salesman self-help" moments, I have found some of the strategies to be genuinely incredible.

The biggest game changer for me has been mirroring what the other person says to avoid conflict and gather more information.

Real life example: My wife has a bad habit of poorly explaining what she wants and where it's located. Then, I get her flustered when I rapid-fire follow up questions. Here is an exchange we have frequently which leaves us both frustrated as hell.

She will ask something like, "Can you get the box out of the drawer please?"

I usually reply, "What box?"

"The box. The red box."

"Okay...what drawer?"

"The drawer, you know, the drawer. Come on."

"DUDE. Can you at least tell me which room you're even talking about?"

"Nevermind, I'll get it."

Lately I've been trying mirroring to help both of us and it's awesome.

"Can you get the box please?"

"Get the box?"

"Yeah, the red box. It has a paper in it that I need."

"Okay, you want the red box with the paper in it?"

"Yeah it's in the kitchen drawer next to the sink."

It's so weird when you first start doing this intentionally, but people don't even notice. I have no idea why it works so much better but it's amazing.

So, this got me thinking, what other little human psychology tricks work? Are there other books that genuinely changed the way you approach people or situations?

I'm a teacher and my job is to teach students who mostly have behavioral problems, so I am always on the look out for more of these things.

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?”

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

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I have been a metalhead for over 20 years but I seem to still mostly listen to the bands I found back then. So mostly bands that started in the 80s or 90s. By the mid 2000s metalcore and its various derivatives got very popular and that wasn't for me, so I kind of stopped paying much attention to new stuff for many years. The only newer band I have been really excited about is the Finnish black metal band Havukruunu, and to some extent Uada and Spectral Wound.

Would love to get some recommendations for new names that have appeared in the last 10 or so years.

Wondering if anyone has any good books or other content to recommend on software design. I feel like when I start out on a new project I always get stuck in a rut of trying to design something good, then end up with an awful design anyways. On the other hand, I've been around professors and more experienced software engineers who seem to effortlessly come up with simple, powerful architectures and interfaces.

While I know that reading a book or two won't get me the experience I need to improve, it does seem like that might be a good jump-start. Anyone have any suggestions for me? Thanks!

I've been thinking about keeping a diary to improve my English because I rarely use it, but I don't know what to write about... So, if you keep a diary, what do you write in it? And what do you use/prefer, app or paper?

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like politics, paypal and reddit. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was befuddled.

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!

I've recently come back to studying German, after having taken a small break for a few months for a new job.

My main form of study is immersion (I recently stumbled across the books of Walter Moers and haven't looked back since) and conversation practice on iTalki.

Nowadays, I try my hardest to only buy tech second-hand and preferably as future proof and modular as possible. My go-to machines are a fully modded Lenovo Thinkpad T430, and a more humble Thinkpad X230, both running Linux (Ubuntu and PopOS respectively). They work just fine for my basic needs (mostly surfing, some occasional streaming and word processing). But they struggle during my conversation lessons on iTalki or Zoom, most of the time either overheating or freezing/stumbling. I realize this might be a Linux problem, but I have also found the web camera and built-in microphone on both machines to be really inadequate for video calls. I gave up using my own laptops for my language lessons over a year ago, and now have resorted to stealing my partners Macbook, which isn't ideal.

Do you have any recommendations for any more recent laptops that would offer a better video conference experience, while offering at least a removable battery? Pricewise it would be great to be find something below €500 used.

I bought an M2 Macbook Air at the start of this year for uni. I only planned to use it for uni work as I have another 'more powerful' laptop that I use for everything else, but I kinda love the M2 and want to make it my daily driver laptop. Battery lasts for ages, screen is great, it's thin and light, etc. The problem is - as you might guess - I only got the 512GB model and if there's one thing Apple hates, it's people having control over their hardware, so no expandable storage. I can't afford to upgrade the entire laptop, so I need to work with what I have. Here's what I want to use it for:

• Graphic design: Adobe software, high-res images, typefaces, etc.
• Music production: Ableton Live 11 Suite, sample packs, plug-ins, project folders, etc.
• Music library: uncompressed .m4a files because iTunes hates Vorbis 😢, ~80% of my library (I don't have everything downloaded yet) is 25GB.
• Web-browsing: Firefox... this one isn't really relevant but I feel like I should include it for completeness.

Does anyone have any tips to stretch this 512GB as faaaaaar as it can go? I have a 2TB external SSD, but I'm wary of keeping anything important on it because it's small and I don't want to accidentally lose a bunch of stuff. I can spend a bit of money (maybe 30usd) if anyone has a good idea that requires buying something, but I can't spend any ludicrous amounts, I already did that to get the laptop!