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.

-----UNDERMOUNTAIN SPOILERS-----

-----HALASTER BLACKCLOAK SPOILERS-----

I've been playing and DMing D&D since the late 70s. Most of my campaigns have been homebrew worlds with my own rulesets. But as with many of us, the pandemic became a personal golden era of online gaming with friends around the world, especially with the old classic modules and Roll20.

This campaign began simply enough. It was called Thug & Thugger, and it only had two players. I told them they were thieves who stole from other thieves, interrupting the thefts and taking what they wanted for themselves. And it worked fine for the first 7-8 levels. But then we got ambitious and I sent them on a Spelljammer ship into the Phlogiston. There, they found the protection of an elder goddess who had been imprisoned and needed them to rescue her. But in the course of their rescue, things went sideways and instead of being murdered by Nalfeshnee and Hezrou demons, the elder goddess in a last gasp to save her heroes sent them "somewhere random."

Where they landed was the seventh level of The Dungeon of the Mad Mage in Undermountain. Not only that, but the demons had been compelled to be their familiars and... once they figured out their scale issues... all of them were no more than nine inches tall. The characters discovered that they couldn't go up any floors, only down. If they were going to survive this, they would have to conquer all 23 levels of the dungeon. Now, I'm well aware that this plot sounds like it came out of the diary of a 12 year old, but ultimately what we wanted was a campaign that finally took players all the way to the end and allowed them godhood after level 20.

With all our play these last few years, the schedules of daily life had defeated nearly every campaign. That was why we only had two players. And that was why we shoe-horned our narrative arc into the only module we could find that would get the players to 20.

The first five floors or so were an absolute bloody blast. They were immensely overpowered, despite being only nine inches tall, and they went through entire hordes like a buzzsaw. After the near-death challenges of the Phlogiston it felt like a victory lap. And as the DM I was fine with it, knowing their bully ways wouldn't last. At a certain point, one of their foes banished the Nalfeshnee (which was a massive loss--those things are stupidly powerful) and they regained their former physical height.

Then it was a fight. The two characters were a warlock/bard and a ranger/monk. Both fought well in the magical dark without disadvantage. That was their main strategy: cast darkness and then wade in. It worked for most of the levels and against a wide variety of enemies, especially since the vast majority of spells require you to "see" your target. But then the monk started spamming stunning strike and they got back to running the table on me. Dungeon of the Mad Mage was written before stunning was a thing, so not a single foe had resistance or immunity to it. He would burn through the legendary saves of nearly any bad guy and still have extra ki points left over.

They leveled and leveled again. They also became clerics to appropriately worship the elder goddess. Their bag of holding filled with gear and each action or attack became as convoluted as a Disney contract. The number of saves, reactions, buffs, etc. that needed to be accounted for on every move was something I won't attempt again without an AI assistant. As they approached the final battle, I realized that I needed help.

One player had told me that another friend group of ours had tried the year before to take on Undermountain but that campaign had fallen apart. So I secretly texted the DM of that group with a proposal: Since you know this campaign so well, I need some assistance for the end. He happily agreed.

On the day of the final battle, the players were locked in combat with Halaster's most senior minions. Suddenly, the Mad Mage himself arrived. That's right. On the Zoom channel, someone new joined. Someone named Halaster. He appeared in a wizard robe and fake white beard, wielding a scepter he'd bought on Amazon, with a screen behind him generated by AI to look like Halaster's lair.

My players lost their minds. They thought I was just going to put on a corny voice and be Halaster myself. No no no. But this wasn't to be just a cameo. I told the new player to legitimately have Halaster kill them. I wasn't looking for a happy ending. And as the DM I wasn't going to be anything but the referee, adjudicating what had now become a PvP situation. Two players against the Mage. My two players finally realized what I had in store for them. This was a serious no-holds-barred fight to the death.

The Halaster player is also a legendary game designer in his own right, a video game designer turned executive who has worked on many games we all know. He called in several other legends of the industry to help him figure out his moves. I even handed him the gift of cursed gloves I'd tricked the monk into putting on several levels before, which made his stunning strikes against Halaster something he needed to roll on the wild sorcery magic table.

And they still beat him and won their freedom and the freedom of their elder goddess. But man was it a battle. They withstood his meteor storm and made saves against his most potent spells. At the end, the bard only had 3hp and nearly everyone else was dead.

But we did it! We finally finished a level 20 campaign. And now we know we never need to do that again, lol. It became so unwieldy and slow after about level 15 that it felt more like work than play.

We look forward to starting over with simple characters who do simple things. The monk will be the DM this time, leading me and the other player in the Lost Mines of Phandelver. And each of us will try playing two simultaneous classic characters this time: me a dwarven cleric and elven illusionist, he a half-orc fighter and wood elf rogue. At least we know our schedules work.

...and within a few weeks I was banned from r/iphone for "ban evasion", which I most definitely did not do.

I've had the same reddit account for over 16 years and other than a surprisingly HUGE number of deleted comments and posts (according to sites that track that) that seem perfectly benign to me (mostly deleted for stupidly trivial technicalities), I've never had any problems on the site. Sure, a few unpopular opinions here and there that get downvoted a little but, but nothing offensive, no trolling, etc.

So, I tried to respond, and here's how the conversation went:

Hello. I’m very confused by this ban notification. The only recent activity that I’ve had on this subreddit is to answer somebody’s question, and I cannot imagine how that answer in any way violated the rules. Can you please help me to at least understand what led to this?

...to which the mod replied:

Ban evasion not that hard to get

...and I responded:

I honestly do not know what you're talking about. It appears that you think that I have been posting with multiple accounts, but I have not. I've been using this same account for over 16 years without ever being accused of such a thing. I'd appreciate it if you could take a look and reconsider.

...to which I got:

No the system detects ban evader like you automatically

...

I'm sorry that you think that I have done such a thing, but I have not. I even co-moderate another subreddit that is a very serious one with its fair share of trolls to deal with, so I get it, but I honestly did not try to evade any prior bans.

... and the only response I get back is:

Stop

I'm so sick and tired of that site, I don't know why I went back after doing so well avoiding it after the somewhat recent events that caused me to uninstall all of the apps and stop using the site. The mods there are abusive and power-hungry and it's a toxic place to be. It's a shame because my account is over 16 years old and I remember the old days when it was nothing like it is now. :(

So, hopefully this time I'll stop using the site for good, this was the reminder that I needed. I've avoided Facebook and other social media due to the toxicity, I don't know why I expected reddit to be any better; please stay above the fray, Tildes!

I'm getting ready to try a long-term media fast, at least a month or two. That means no Social, no general forum talk (I have a couple of task-specific groups I have to stick with), no general Internet browsing, and minimal news.

But I don't want to completely divorce myself from the major news events of the world. In case Russia invades the EU, I want to know about it before Russian soldiers are knocking on my door. If a new global pandemic kicks off, or they fix global warming ... you know, Big Ticket items.

So that's the question. If you only get one news source, that provides objective (-ish) reporting focused on actual news (not sports, not pop culture, not click-bait-y diet-fads and vitamin recommendations) ... news of the state of the world (preferably including the world beyond the United States).

I realize there probably isn't a single source that hits all my bullets, but that's okay; I just need one that's close.

Danke, y gracias.

Edit: For now, my first pick is AP News' World News section ( https://apnews.com/world-news ). So, that's sort of my baseline; anything better than that available?

Edit #2: So, apparently, AP News has either handicapped or completely eliminated their RSS feed(s); I'm getting some results, but all old and suspiciously incomplete, and the 'Net is full of "here's how to cobble together the equivalent of a real AP News RSS feed" tips. So, unless I figure this out quickly, I'm just about to lose interest in AP News.

Anyone have any tips on this?

This past weekend was EVO Japan, one of the largest fighting game tournaments in the world. On top of all of the high level competitive play, there was a slew of new information for both upcoming and existing games. I figured it would be easier to compile this all to one place instead clogging up the whole ~games group.

Game DLC

Street Fighter 6 - Akuma Gameplay Trailer
Tekken 8 - SEASON 1 Trailer
GUILTY GEAR -STRIVE- Season Pass 3 Playable Character #4 [Slayer] Trailer
Idol Showdown Next Fes: Overview Trailer

Granblue didn't have a gameplay trailer, but they did release some info about their upcoming dlc character Beatrix. News article and screenshots here.

New Game Info
FATAL FURY: City of the Wolve | Marco Rodrigues
2XKO At EVO Japan 2024
Iron Saga VS - Getter Robot PV
Hunter X Hunter Nen Impact PV1

There is probably more, but this is the main chunk of into.

As soon as Deimos graciously adds the nominated book titles, we will be voting on the next set of books to read for the book club. Voting will close end of day Thursday May 2 Pacific time.

If you plan to read with us, please upvote as many as five titles. We will select at least four, possibly more if there are books with solid support. Each voting thread requires Deimos to work, and I am going to have less availability for a few months so we want to select books to read for the next few months.

I look forward to reading and discussing with you all.

In the past few months I have been reading a lot about historical food culture. It's kind of amazing how much things have changed here in the US. Over the last century or so we have basically eliminated communal eating and massively changed the economics of prepared meals. At one point we had automats and cafeterias which skipped out on most of the "front of house" service and focused on serving large volumes of people to keep prices low. There were also diners, which are much different from what we consider to be a diner today; they were very small places that only prepared simple things that needed very little labor to prepare; things like hash browns, sandwiches, or pancakes, so the food was still very cheap. But because they were small, they were able to serve smaller markets that other restaurants were not able to capitalize on. Compare that to today, where diners are just restaurants that have 50s style decor.

But the thing I think is much more unusual is how rare we see food used in service of a message. It's something that has a long history across the globe. Most notably, religions operate food kitchens that help to bring poor people into their folds. Some religions actually have a built-in food culture that includes feeding your neighbors. It's really effective too; there's a small chain of restaurants where I live that has inexpensive food which has some bhuddist texts at the dining tables, and honestly it had me considering joining a religion for the first time. If I spoke Chinese they might have got me! Eating food requires a baseline of trust, so if you can get someone to eat at your restaurant you will bypass a lot of the caution that people approach the world with.

With that being said, why isn't food-based activism a lot more popular? I'm sure that it would work for much more than religion. A restaurant that acts as a messaging platform doesn't necessarily need to be funded by food sales, so they can undercut the competition on price and reach an even greater audience. Given the ways I have seen religions use food to further their means, I think that it could even go farther than changing people's minds about topics and actually motivate people to take action and join communities who are actually making real change. Food is both relatively inexpensive and it's something that everyone needs to survive, so it seems to me that food-based activism is the single largest missed opportunity for community organization.

Hey y'all! In about a month I need to drive from San Antonio, Texas to State College, Pennsylvania. The current plan is to take I35 to I30 and I40, which will take me through Dallas, Little Rock, Nashville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, and just outside Pittsburgh.

It's a long drive, so I'm looking for a few places to stop along the way and stretch my legs. I know it's a large area and this is a very vague question, but does anyone know any particularly interesting places to stop?

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Israel-Hamas war 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.

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.

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.

Last in the line of prominent female leading roles is Fargo from 1996 directed by the Coen brothers and starring Frances McDormand.

IMDb
Letterboxd
Wikipedia

Besides any thoughts on this movie, what did you think of Frances McDormand's performance in this?

The schedule for May is:

• 6th: Pan's Labyrinth
• 13th: The Zone of Interest
• 20th: Luxury Car
• 27th: The Tree of Life