Basilisk

My parents really liked Ticket to Ride and Qwirkle. Much more complicated than that, though, and my dad starts pulling faces.

Yeah, conflating an adventure that's on rails and "railroading" seems to be really common lately. The idea that you've got a straight through-line through your adventure without a ton of options how to proceed differently is not only pretty common, it used to be pretty explicitly how you'd run a game. Most published adventures would start you off, give you a goal, and most of your options on how to complete it would be like a video game; you might talk your way out of a confrontation or you might fight your way out, or you might sneak past it. Simply avoiding it altogether though? Not really an option, or if it was, it was only because you could choose one of two or three "tracks" to get to the same endpoint. "Sandbox"-ier games did exist and even sandbox-style published adventures existed. But they were decidedly less common and certainly not the expected product.

Frankly when I'm starting a campaign, I tend to start off with a short premade adventure in this style anyways. If the players don't gel or find they're not interested in D&D, or we just can't get a schedule together, then I haven't invested a ton of time in building a playhouse that won't get used. But also being able to hold new players' hands through the really overwhelming part of learning a whole new system and a character and also coming to terms with the things you can do in a TTRPG, by limiting their options to "one way in, one way out, follow the tracks and you're going the right way" is just one thing they don't need to flounder through. If it sticks and they like it, then when the first part of the adventure is done, then they get access to the bigger world and can start to make decisions about what they want to do and where they want to go.

Anson Mount's wife had their first child just before the filming of the season, so he was given a few episodes off

Generally speaking, I think it's the ideal use case for AI art. You wouldn't likely otherwise be buying art assets, and most likely just be finding whatever comes up under a Google search anyway. Meanwhile you can dial in to a clearer representation of what you want to depict from the art without necessarily having to "make do" with "oh, it's like this but imagine he's an elf instead..."

I'm not actively playing, but I've got a 4e one-shot ready for the next time my group can't do the regular game, and I keep threatening them with 3e.

The last time I took the blue pill I didn't care if it was a bot or not, I wanted to fuck it.

I own it. It's fun to play with but ultimately suffers from the same problem that almost every tool in this style does. The resources you get to use are limited to the ones that they've thought to include. If you want to make a jail, that's fine, you can make it work. A tavern? Easy. An ancient Greek temple? Eh, you can get there with a bit of imagination. A bathroom? Sorry, bud, you're on your own.

I've traditionally used Dungeon Painter Studio for my maps, and while it has similar limitations, it has the benefit of being able to import other art, and you get a whole dimension to hide your crimes in. That vaguely bookshelf- looking rectangular thing on the map? It's an armory cabinet in the barracks. Now in the bathroom it's a medicine cabinet. In the bedroom? A wardrobe. You can't see what's in it, can't see how tall it is or how high it's mounted on the wall, so you get to fill in the details with my description. 3d limits your ability to do that because everything looks like what it is. So if you don't have a model of what you're looking for, it's more obvious when you're making do.

I agree with you. The small bump to things like attack rolls, damage rolls, and save DCs from hitting levels that bump your modifier are noticeable, and playing as a wizard in the campaign I'm in right now I can tell you I'm champing at the bit to get my spell DC that one little bit higher because it's the difference between some of my spells having no effect or outright changing the flow of combat. Getting that boost and also some of the big-hitter feats like Tough or War Caster would be a bit much. It gets even worse if you're getting the benefit of the 2 points ASI as well as one from the half-feats.

On the other hand, though, there's a huge gap in the power level between feats, and I'm not sure I'd necessarily feel the same way if the feat chosen was Shield Master, which is one of the weaker of the full feats. I might also be more inclined to set aside a list of the more flavourful feats like Chef that the players could just get for free without the associated ability boost and let the players just pick one for free as character building.

Is it a "mural" if it's painted on a road? The term literally means "wall"...

Yeah, my in-person campaign didn't survive the transition to online. One that started online is still going strong online, but it feels like transitioning from one to the other is a big ask, especially since what someone gets from an in-person game is not necessarily the same as a remote game.

On the other hand, online is nice in that there's no rushing around to get somewhere, no travel time to deal with. Just be at your desk on time and spend a few hours throwing dice. If I could figure out how to do that but still get to play with my minis I'd be in a good place...

• ”We’ve got subdermal universal translators.” This is the first mention of Starfleet personnel having translators implanted beneath the skin. In “Little Green Men” we saw that Ferengi had translators implanted in the ear canal, but Starfleet translators have always been part of the communicator or combadge, a function of the ship or station, or a wholly separate device.

Subcutaneous transponders have been part of the Trek lore since "Patterns of Force" though, and Archer had one implanted in "Stratagem". Given that there's no reason to believe that the Ekosians spoke English (at best you might expect German) it seems likely that these shared the UT functions that the other communications gear has.

Just double checked the cardfetcher bot post, looks like calling by set isn't implemented yet.