I recently got some superb advice here on making a fun brewery adventure, and I had a few more questions for the more experienced DMs out there. To reiterate, I am DMing a group of lvl 3 characters for only 1-2 sessions so I can learn the ropes, and I would like to include some fun traps they need to look out for. I'd love to also make sure that everyone gets a chance to contribute, and not just have the rogue (our most experienced player) do all the detection and disarming.

What sort of things would be fun to set up so that players would all need to watch their step, but could also contribute a bit?

Party has a bard, ranger, druid, and rogue.

Anybody else play? Nebulous scratches a very particular itch that I didn't know I had. It's sort of like The Expanse meets The Hunt For Red October. The learning curve is fairly long - it doesn't take much to get the basics, but mastering EWAR, missiles, etc takes some work.

Hey everybody!

I joined the Tildes Minecraft server last week and had an absolute blast building my house. I've barely played any Minecraft before (only early-game wandering around and mining) and it was super fun to wander the town and see everyone's builds and to build my own house based on stuff I looked up online. Also the bit where part of my house started burning down and everybody online came to help put it out (I did not know how to put it out myself guys so y'all were lifesavers there) was unironically super fun.

However, my house is more or less finished for now, and since I'm not very experienced with Minecraft I have no idea what to do next. There are already tons of cool farms in the town (legitimately super impressed) but I don't know enough about the game to feel comfortable trying to fill any gaps there, and I certainly don't feel comfortable trying to gather resources in more difficult areas like the Nether or The End given my extremely low skill level (others can attest I was repeatedly killed by the same skeleton over and over on more than one occasion lol). So now I'm wondering... what do I do next?

In a singleplayer game I'd just look up what my options are online, but since this is a multiplayer server it feels more like something I should ask the community about. What can I contribute to the server as a total noob? What are things that I can do that won't interfere with other people's projects or get ruined by me not having the experience with Minecraft to implement it properly? Is there anything that people are really itching to have done that is within my skillset?

In addition to this, any more general advice about how to play the game, particularly in a multiplayer setting like this, is super appreciated. Everyone I've chatted with on the server has been super nice and I'm really loving the environment y'all have created.

Also unrelatedly can someone please tell me how the public transit works. I do not know how to ride it lol.

I also was wondering whether there's any dedicated space to discussing and planning things on this server yet, like a Discord server or something. Obviously tildes itself exists, but I figure someplace for more transient discussions and planning would also be handy and I wondered if someone had already made one.

I'll go first: turn-based combat.

While not as common as they once were, there are still a lot of games, AAA and indie alike, that get massively popular and are known for their supposedly excellent turn-based combat. Games that are probably what a lot of people who don't care for turn-based combat make an exception for, for one reason or another. Say they really enjoy how Undertale is "the RPG where you don't need to kill anything", or how Persona 5 is "so stylish". Also, there's the classic JRPGs of old, such as the older Final Fantasy games, or these more military grid based kind of games like Fire Emblem.

I just don't "get" any of it. I've never beaten a game featuring turn-based combat from start to finish. Yes, that includes Pokemon games. I don't know what it is specifically. I've beaten games of basically every other genre, but when I start any turn-based game because of some friend recommendation or good reviews, I try it, am genuinely invested for a couple hours, then my interest in the game just dies all of a sudden. I don't think it's any one issue really, probably a lot of different things.

Anyone else never really got into these kinds of games? Or do you have some other game genre that everyone else swears by that you just don't care for?

I don’t know why, but I just can’t get good at Chess. I’ve played for a couple of years and my elo fluctuates drastically. I’ve been as high as 900 and as low as 750 playing rapid in the last two weeks on chess.com. I would just like to break 1000 for now, or heck, even just get into the mid 900’s.

Does anyone have any resources or tips for how to get better at this game? I’ve watched videos online, I’ve been doing the lessons and whatnot that are offered through chess.com as well. I’m just so incredibly frustrated and I’m tired of losing all the time.

A continuation of last week's thread. So, got any recommendations for good multiplayer games, and what do you like about them if so? Looking to get a multiplayer game going here?

A few of the open options from last week:
There's a survival Minecraft server
There's a game nights Discord server
There's a Guild Wars 2 guild for North American server players, contact me for an invite with your account name.
There's a Splatoon 3 pool
(Note that these are run by Tildes users rather than being officially Tildes.)

Hey everyone! Since it was brought up in this thread I've created a Minecraft server.

Details:

• Version: 1.20 (Join from Bedrock)
• Host: tildes.nore.gg
• Plugins: Basics for server administration and rapid leaf decay

I know there was some push back on running v1.20. I am operating under the assumption that the majority of Minecraft players here aren't opposed to the newest version.

Currently the server is un-whitelisted.

I used to run moderately large Minecraft servers years ago. I'd love for us to have a healthy player base so that we can have periodic events (in game lore, UHC, etc.)! I play more of a game master role - so don't be surprised if you see me just floating around in creative mode!

Edit:

Updates:

• Set sleep threshold to 50% of online players in beds
• Disabled chat verification enforcement server-side. You need to install a mod to disable it client side if you're afraid of the chat reporting system.
• Disabled mob griefing
• Installed a fast leaf decay plugin
• Upped from 20 to 32 player slots (we hit 20/20 today!)
• Created a site to get build access (You can use /nonick in game to revert this - and /realname to reveal the Minecraft account name for another player with a nickname)

There have been a lot of complaints from DMs over the years about Critical Role and the "Matt Mercer Effect" causing new players to have unrealistic expectations of tabletop RPGs. Baldur's Gate 3 has the opportunity to introduce many new players to the d20 system/5e DnD specifically. Though it's a bit different in that the game is obviously scripted and you can't do literally anything, the game provides a ton of options and fleshed out paths, including full support of niche spells like speak with animals/speak with dead. Do you think this might have a similar influence on expectations from some new players moving forward or do you think since BG3 is a video game it will have less of an impact than CR and other tabletop shows have?

We've had a pretty awesome Minecraft server for about a week now (tildes.nore.gg). But our spawn area has been lacking (and unavailable for player modification).

If you're a creative player we could use your help!

How to get access

If you already play on Tildes SMP then you can connect directly to tildes.nore.gg:25566 right now! If you gained access to our SMP server after this post went live you'll have to ask either @Bauke or myself for whitelist access.

Rules

1. Play nice! You're all working on the spawn area together.
2. Please tag your work if you think it's likely someone will have conflicting plans so you can be contacted.
3. Build assuming a player will spawn in right on 0, 0 facing North.