I started playing D&D a few months ago at adventure league, and I've had a ton of fun. The problem, however, is that more of my friends want to come with me than there is room for at my AL table. The solution is obviously to host my own game, so I got the starter pack and DM guide on amazon(D&D stuff is heavily discounted right now!). We decided not to use the premades, and I've already helped most of them build their own characters.

Anyway, this will be my first time playing as the game master, and many of my friends first times playing D&D at all. Any advice to make it a smooth and fun experience?

I am a Russian and recently I started to really like the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads”. I searched for images of things mentioned in the song, like Blue Ridge mountains and Shenandoah river, and they do look pretty. Definitely somewhere I would like to hike. I've also heard that the local BBQ is good, which is relevant to my interests.

At the same time, almost every time I see West Virginia mentioned on e.g. Reddit, there is always someone pointing out that WV is, for lack of a better term, a shithole. I've seen that occurring several times on several different subreddits. What is up with that? Is that just a thing where the people from one US state always feel the need to throw crap at other states? Are there economical reasons? Is it too conservative/racist/what-have-you?

Just in case, I am not trying to start something, I am genuinely curious, how can one place be called “almost heaven” by one group of people and at the same called a “shithole” by another.

Just wondering what peoples' thoughts are on the most recent total overhaul of the game. I haven't bought the megacorp DLC yet, but I did play a multiplayer game with a friend that did, and I was pretty impressed. Much as I detest tedious micro, the new planet management system is light years ahead of the old one, and represents a much more realistic pace for colony development- no more outpopulating and outdeveloping your homeworld in twenty years. The main issues I've seen so far are poor balancing between raw materials, market balance, and finished goods, and AI. Since nearly all finished goods require minerals exclusively as an input, you get constant mineral deficits and a market that places more value on minerals than the goods made from them.

As for the market, the demand/pricing mechanism is poorly implemented, so you can exploit it for infinite money. Say a good costs 1EC/ea, you put in a bulk purchase order for 10,000 units. You pay 1EC for each of them, but after the order the sell price is boosted to 2EC. You can then immediately dump everything you just bought, selling each for 2EC. They could (and probably will) fix this by considering the price of each unit individually based on whatever formula they use for calculating market demand.

Finally, the AI completely shits the bed with the new administrative cap mechanic, and ends up decades behind any competently managed player empire in both economy and technology. But then I suppose poor AI is nothing new for Stellaris.

Issues aside though, I feel like with this patch, Stellaris has finally taken its place as a worthy successor to the classic Master of Orion 2.

For me, I value gameplay and originality. For example, let's take Splatoon. It gets a lot of hate because it has "kiddy" graphics. But I like it. It's gameplay is great. It's a really fun shooter, and I don't care if it has cartoonish graphics. As far as originality, it has amazing new ideas, such as the ability to swim through ink laid down by your weapon. What do you all value in a game?

Hey! Despite the seemingly negative name, I want to make this thread so anyone can say pretty much whatever you want about the games you've been playing! Whether it's a review, a brief paragraph or two of thoughts, recommendations, or frustrations, let's try to commiserate or proliferate discussion about what we've been playing!