After many years of Roll20 D&D campaigns, we have whittled the process down to the bare essentials: there are only three of us now, with one DM and two players running two characters each. Having completed many of the classic modules of our youth, we are now tackling an extension to the Mines of Phandelver - Shattered Obelisk. Because this is golden age D&D from when we were teens, we chose a classic lineup. My friend is playing a half orc fighter and wood elf rogue, while I'm playing the dwarven cleric and high elf wizard.

What is new for us this time is that the DM is brand new to the position. He's been a player forever but has never had the time to run a campaign. These pre-packaged modules make things quite easy though so we're delighted to finally get the forever player behind the screen so that the two normal DMs can really play this team to its potential. It's been a blast.

But what I realized yesterday is how different his style is, and that's what I'd like to discuss here. I come from a theater and Hollywood background as a screenwriter/playwright and character actor. I also have a ton of improv comedy experience. I'll throw out a number of story elements or NPCs and just cut loose, completely fine with where the dice and the player decisions take me. Our other usual DM is also a Hollywood guy, but he's a producer. So for him it's all about marshaling the resources, optimizing the setting, and conducting the grand scenario. He cuts right through all my roleplaying to get to the tactical play as soon as possible.

Well our new DM is a senior medical doctor at a teaching hospital. I just realized as we played last night that he isn't narrative in the slightest because he is presenting each of the scenarios or NPCs as if he's on his rounds with a knot of junior doctors, giving them a brief outline or quick synopsis of each patient's condition before moving on to the next. It's such a different way of approaching this kind of data that it took me a few months of this before I realized what he was doing. All of us are trained to our own methods, that's for sure.

How do you and your tables present information and move the game forward? I fear that the success of Critical Role, etc. has given too many newer players the idea that there is only one way to conduct these kinds of games and I'd like to hear of more original approaches.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/9

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

I'm interested to know what are some series you think are worth reading all the way through -- especially if someone is less likely to start them because of how long they are in the first place.

I'm going to leave series length completely up to interpretation and not set a specific minimum number of books/pages/words. If you think it's long but worth a read all the way through, then it's worth sharing here!

The earth, once scarred by shadow’s hand,
Now trembles soft, a waking land.
From soil soaked with roots that bled,
New shoots arise where death had fed.

The storm has passed, its howling stilled,
The air now warm, the silence filled.
With whispers light, the seeds take hold,
Their leaves like sparks of green and gold.

The soil hums with tender grace,
A pulse of life begins its race.
No longer bound by gloom’s demand,
It rises tall, a fearless stand.

Though remnants of the past remain,
They sing of hope, not loss or pain.
The cycle turns, as it must do—
To bury old, and birth the new.

Congratulations to McLaren! First Constructors' Championship win since 1998!

Great drives by Sainz and especially Leclerc. Starting from P19 and ending P3 is beyond impressive.

Hamilton came alive this race, ending P4. End of an era. I'm sure he'd've liked a podium to end his time with Mercedes, but still a hell of a drive, moving up 12 places from the start.

Felt bad for some of the guys who were or may have been in their last race: Bottas, Lawson, Colapinto, and Perez all DNF'd unceremoniously.

With that, the season is officialy over. I, for one, am glad. It's been a long season. For US folks, enjoy sleeping in on the weekends again for a few months. Looking ahead, 2025 pre-season testing is in Bahrain, Feb. 26-28, with the first race of the season in Melbourne a couple weeks later. See you all next year!

Next race:

Australian Grand Prix
Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit (Melbourne)
Sunday, March 16, 2025

Today's problem description: https://adventofcode.com/2024/day/8

Please post your solutions in your own top-level comment. Here's a template you can copy-paste into your comment to format it nicely, with the code collapsed by default inside an expandable section with syntax highlighting (you can replace python with any of the "short names" listed in this page of supported languages):

<details>
<summary>Part 1</summary>

```python
Your code here.
```

</details>

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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This could be an organizational and curation method, a "simple" task you thought you could automate, or an open ended interpretation of the question. If you've spent "an adequate amount of time" on such a project, but others disagree, you're free to share as well.

Good things come from the pursuit of legacy, by calling it a delusion I don't mean to paint it as a fundamentally bad thing.

To establish some context, I'm putting aside supernatural rewards and punishments like valhalla and hell.

Legacy for the purposes of this post is having an impact that outlives you. People remembering your name. A lot of people claim it as a significant motivation and, I suspect, a lot more people are motivated by it without openly admitting it.

The obvious reason being that it's an antidote to mortality or, at the core, impermanence. Chaos. It's a fear that motivates us all more than we probably admit because most people avoid thinking and talking about more often than they don't. It's the unnamed void that's always there at the edges, creeping in and reminding us every once in a while that it could all end any time. That nothing lasts.

Legacy, or the eternal rewards I'm leaving out of the conversation, is a big shiny counterpoint to impermanence. You might even call it a psychological coping mechanism. We all need them sometimes and a key part of their operation is that they're not entirely rational.

And legacy is pretty irrational. No matter what we do we'll die, and then everyone who knew us will die. Not long after, in the scope of time, everyone who remembers us will die. If we're Einstein then maybe people love and remember us for a few extra centuries before we become a rarely visited piece of ancient history. At some point even Einstein will be forgotten.

So legacy isn't actually an antidote to impermanence, it just feels like it if you don't think about it too much. You can't make a mark on history big enough to last forever in any meaningful sense. Which leaves its impact on the lives we're living. Does it make them better? When people wear t-shirts with Einstein and hearts on them does it echo back through time and give the still living Einstein a tingle? Does he get better orgasms, smoother skin, deeper relationships? I don't think he does.

He probably gets a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment from knowing that he's moved the needle. That he's leaving the world better than he found it. That's worth a lot, but it's not really about legacy, it's about impact. Something which is available to everyone all the time.

I bring this up because periodically I see legacy contextualized as almost a virtue. Something noble to strive for. To me it's a false idol, like fame, celebrity or wealth worship. It comes with a partially broken set of values.

Whereas values that arise from prioritizing the lives we're living and the people we're living them with seem to me to be a lot healthier and more fulfilling. And I think, in a bigger sense, more conducive to a healthy society. If more people are investing their identities and energy in values that give them a meaningful return without needing to achieve a particular level of historical impact, they'll suck less. If legacy is the goal, and you need to step on people, or neglect relationships, or put off mental health in order to get there, it's very easy to rationalize doing it. And if we hold the people who do those things up as ideals, we're tacitly telling society that it's something they should be pursuing too.

To put it one way, and digress a little, we'd probably have a lot less self involved billionaires if we didn't put them on pedastals and talk about them all the time. As things stand it's no wonder that so many children grow up believing that achieving wealth or fame is the best way to get attention. It absolutely is. Whether we love or hate it, we can't shut up about it.

Of course talking about wealth and fame brings in a bunch of factors that aren't necessarily about legacy, and I don't want to turn this into an essay about everything that's wrong with culture. But I do think that all of the above are part of a sort of package of self defeating values that we all (mostly unintentionally) play a part in perpetuating.

I don't expect we're going to stop doing that any time soon but I think at some point, between here and a future where we're not constantly flirting with annihilating ourselves, we're going to need to.