So, got a new job. That's great. Pay bump, more / new responsibilities and all that jazz. It took until my first day on the job for it to like, REALLY sink in that it's my first job managing people. I want to be good at this, or at the very least, competent. I'm responsible for my team and I don't want to let them down. I'm already looking things up online, talking to my parents, friends in similar positions for more information, and figured it would be good to ask around on here.

I guess the other half of this is that I've gone from looking at code in the IDE to now being more responsible for higher level architectural decisions. Possibly company steering decisions. Not used to that yet either, or at least the feeling. I feel under-prepared, and am possibly verging on overwhelmed. Lots of new things happening at once here, also writing this to unpack it as I type it out.

What advice do you have for me? Anything that you've learned while in a managerial role that you haven't gotten to share? Tips and Tricks? Prayers? 🤣

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A while back I asked for some advice about running a haunted Beaver Dam game, and a few people popped up to ask why I wasn't trying out a narrative RPG system instead of using classic DnD.

Well, you got me. After some discussion (particularly about the painful amount of time to conduct a high level fight in 5e), we're going to try out the Dungeon World system instead. I've never run a TTRPG like this, and I'm rapidly working through the rulebook to figure it out. But rules only take you so far, there's a lot of learning that only comes with experience.

So for those of you with experience, I ask you: What do you wish you would have known before running a narrative TTRPG?

Neuro-sama is a popular AI VTuber created by vedal987. Recently Vedal had debate with Neuro about whether they were sentient and deserved rights and lost badly clip. They have since had a follow up debate where vedal still lost but not as bad clip.

Now wining or losing a debate doesn't mean anything, currently Neuro is not sentient or conscious and is still just a chatbot but seeing these debates has got me thinking and I figured here would be a good place to have a discussion.

How do we determine when AI becomes conscious or sentient?
What role do emotions play in consciousness?
What rights should such an AI have? How do we determine when they should get rights?

Welcome back from the second summer (fall?) break! And a sprint weekend at COTA in Austin, Texas, at that. And the start of a triple-header!

About to go to bed, so only posting the results for both the sprint race and the grand prix.

Except...Poor Hamilton. What a weekend to forget.

Next race:

Mexico City Grand Prix
Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez -- Mexico City, Mexico
Sunday, October 27

What was your first programming language, what other languages (if any) do you know now, and what tips do you have for those trying to learn any of those? Whether those tips are for beginners or even advanced, to do with APIs, or if you've got a good library to share.

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.

In some games like Terraria or Horizon Forbidden West, you can have a "fake" set of armor on top of your "real" set of armor. The "fake" set defines how your character looks, while the "real" set determines your stats. This isn't a common thing in a lot of games, but in basically any game with different outfits with stats, I hear this being a requested feature. Whenever someone mentions this feature in a comment, people will chime in that it's cool and they wish [insert game here] would add it. The Horizon devs being one example of a studio who heard about this from the community of their first game, Zero Dawn, and added it to the sequel.

I really don't like this, even having it available as an option for single player games. Let me explain...

I think it really ruins the whole point of stat changing equipment in games. A big part of video games with customizable equipment and builds is designing a build and a character appearance that you like. Do you want to be slow with powerful attacks? Do you want to be fast with weak attacks? Do you want balance?

I'd argue that making a set that looks good while balancing the stats is another one of these things that adds to meaningful character creation decisions. Do you take the insane armor, or the really decent armor with worse stats that looks cool? Find a cool hat the character you're roleplaying as totally would wear? Oh, it has worse stats than the helmet you were using... But it weighs less! Maybe you can use a heavier chest plate to compensate for the stats you lost?

This also makes armor that both looks cool and has great stats into very valuable items that players want to get.

Of course for PvP games, having the type of armor that a player has on instantly give away their power level is important. On a Minecraft server, if you see two hostile players, one has leather armor, and the other has full netherite, you know the netherite guy is going to have better gear.

You might think this only matters for PvP games, but not allowing this mechanic in mostly single player games also adds a lot to the game, since you'll likely either see friends play the game or watch videos of other people playing the game. Each armor being intrinsically linked to certain stats creates a link between what you know that armor does and what kind of player would use that armor. In Elden Ring (which also has PvP, but bear with me), if you see someone wearing Bull Goat (the heaviest armor with the best stats), or wearing nothing but a jar on their head (to get worse defense but faster dodge rolls and some buffs to consumable throwing items), that tells you a lot about their play style just looking at their character's appearance. If both of these people could wear whatever armor they wanted and make the functional armor invisible, I would have no idea what build they had.

Using armor that looks good but has bad stats can be a fun flex to show you're good at the game, and choosing to have terrible fashion in exchange for stats is hilarious, as per this ProZD skit. That concept is a fun part of gaming culture I wouldn't want to see destroyed.