mozz

It brings me joy that Everett's wife is just as much of an unapologetic clod-thumper as he is

Like I said:

Let your players still have their agency; don’t just declare that it doesn’t work (unless you all wanna agree to house rule that it just doesn’t exist or something).

Like I said, I agree with you about not just cancelling it entirely unless there's an OOC discussion about making a house rule about it.

You can't let the players ruin your fun (and, likewise, their own, because it turns a challenging situation into some stupid anticlimax and basically removes curses from the game as a mechanic). Likewise you can't ruin your players' fun and just unilaterally say this curse is removal-proof. Fortunately, there are multiple middle ground third options available, that preserve the fun for all parties involved.

You gotta have your game plan for why the curse isn’t solvable

Maybe it’s a disease, not a curse. Maybe it’s an evil magical sword, but it’s not cursed per se, it’s just an asshole. Maybe the magic that operates the McGuffin is set to detonate like a bomb if you make an attempt to disable it. You can feel the balance of energies, such that a slight slip will release an incredible conflagration. Do you really want to continue? You’ll have to do a wisdom check with a pretty high DC. If you’re down for that though, you might be able to remove the curse.

Yeah I know that’s not what it says in the books. This amulet isn’t from the books. Do you want to keep going with remove curse? Or try to find another way?

There are always solutions. Remove Curse is bullshit; IDK what they were thinking with it. But yeah you just gotta plan ahead a little bit. Let your players still have their agency; don’t just declare that it doesn’t work (unless you all wanna agree to house rule that it just doesn’t exist or something). Just plan your way around it. Best case is something like your players looking for some way to buff their wisdom enough so they feel confident taking on the Remove Curse, and then you all get to find out what transpires.

In America it is almost a universal practice. If you have a criminal record, you might or might not have problems; if you have a felony, you’re fucked for almost every job.

If you want to learn a depressing amount about it, I have heard that the book “The New Jim Crow” makes a pretty compelling argument that the systems of criminal conviction, credit, educational qualifications, rent, bank loans, probation and parole, and what-have-you, have functionally brought back a good amount of the machinery of segregation into the modern era, because it creates effectively a two-tier system with most people who started out poor and a huge majority of minorities stuck into the second system.

I wasn't trying to say anything against people who do those jobs or that they shouldn't be paid. I was saying that having a felony will severely constrain your options going forward in life changing fashion.

That outcome, and also the mistreatment financial and otherwise of the people doing those jobs, are two things we gotta fix.

I'm not your citation monkey

I actually found one, because I was wondering if me and the dictionary were the wrong ones, but I refuse to send it because what I already sent is accurate + sufficient. You can accept or not; it's up to you.

“The Great Train Robbery” by Michael Crichton

It’s like a Guy Ritchie movie times 10, and all (apparently) real

Oooohhhh

I get it, I understand now

His friend hit it with her car, and he decided he wanted to take the body home and cut it up for meat.

The decision to get out of your car and start fuckin' with the dead bear cub's body, just assuming that it has no family in the area, seems to me like honestly the most serious mistake of the entire bad idea adventure.

?

The quote from my second part is exactly what he said.

They were busy handwringing about how John Kerry was a coward, Gore was boring, and Howard Dean yelled real loud that one time. And, in the meantime, their friends they were running cover for were pulping the American economy for everything they could get, squeezing the vulnerable for every last little drop of blood they could manage to extract, and then throwing a lot of them in prison (profitable! it's just a smart decision) to get rid of them.