I hear this criticism of LLMs all the time and I just don’t get it. They’re language models, they take language inputs and produce language outputs. They aren’t designed to do math. It’s like complaining that a reciprocating saw can’t do math.

That is undeniably a very cool kind of firefighter, but firefighting is a team sport and I think they’re all cool.

Firefighters are pretty cool.

I treat it as a real question in medical settings. In some cases it can be helpful information for a provider. Even in the worst case it says “I’m not here for pleasantries, I got problems and I’m here to address them”.

Really though, it depends entirely on the person. With my partner I will try to give the most complete answer I can, with friends and coworkers it depends on how close our relationship is. With strangers it may be a completely perfunctory answer to a completely perfunctory question, especially if I’m not up for defending a non-perfunctory answer, but I like to keep my answers real when I have the spoons for it.

I have about 20 sites bookmarked with just their favicon that are sort of “first order access”, though I use some of them more regularly than others. At random intervals, one will catch my eye and I’ll think “I haven’t used that in a while, I don’t think I need that up there anymore” and I’ll remove it, usually while I’m at it I’ll remove others too. I have about a dozen folders too, these are more long-term storage, e.g. I have one for all my financial institutions (not to brag but I have several student loan servicers 😣), one for network security tools, one for rare media finding tools, etc. These are used less often and they usually get put there after I’ve had to go look them up several times. I tend to keep it well pruned though, I think I have maybe 200 distinct sites bookmarked.

I think that’s a good take. The puzzle can be fiendish, but it should be solvable.

If a player asks if they can use a skill to solve a problem I almost always roll with it, but my rule is that dice rolls are only binding if the DM asked for them. but there are some situations where the roll wouldn’t impact the game (e.g. trying to jump to the moon). I think being suspicious of NPCs is reasonable, and I think it’s good for the story if some characters are good at sniffing out lies and some trusting souls are just as pure as the driven snow.

As for the players not paying attention, I have been on both sides of the screen and sometimes, though I am trying really hard to pick up what the DM is putting down, the plot is just impenetrable. Still fun, but I have no idea what’s going on despite the world-shaking consequences of our actions. Effectively telling a story is hard at the best of times and making it collaborative doesn’t do anything to make it easier. If I spin a sprawling epic and the players miss 90% of it, I think that’s just the result of a bunch of folks just trying to relax and play a fun game. And if you want your players to remember something, you better be prepared to repeat it a few times.

The traveling huckster that the party meets on the road is one of my favorite stock characters. They bring the characters macguffins that may or may not be real, they send them on fetch quests, they drop gossip that the party needs to know, I get to do a skeazy voice. So versatile 😌

Funny you should mention it, because one of my campaigns involves stealing, and destroying, a Platonic Ideal. if the ideal is destroyed, that concept ceases to exist in reality. No one knows if it’s ever been done, because no one would be able to remember the concept after a successful heist.

But with the right team and a portal to the realm of Pure Thought, it could be done.

I love the orphanage 😂 I have played a few campaigns where the main conceit is “we’re an adventuring guild, we send you out on missions and if you live you get paid” and I’ve always wanted to run one where the Adventurer’s Guild is literally the mafia that controls a major city, and the players get sent on increasingly shady missions until they cotton on to what’s happening. I love the idea of the penny dropping mid-orphanage robbery.

“Why are there kids here?”

“I thought we were here to clean out a vault”

“Of course there’s a vault. You think they can just leave the money they need to buy food over the winter lying around? These little guttersnipes will steal anything that isn’t nailed down”

“It’s their food money?”

“…are we the bad guys?”

“We’re here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and in this campaign bubble gum’s not a thing”

I imagine whether or not you can taste the rock depends on how well the candy is made. Cheaper rock is coarser and contains more regular rock grit, the more expensive stuff is milled finer and is almost pure magic crystal.

I imagine it would be kind of a touristy thing, like there might be street vendors selling rock candy in a town market, and some fancier confectioners that all claim to have the finest rock candy in the whole region.

The final insult to the rocks is the the candy is mostly sold to travelers because most people agree that it’s not that good. kinda like licorice, or salt water taffy. Some people love it, and it’s a kind-of interesting feeling to have the crystals dissolve in your mouth, but most people would just as soon pass after they’ve had it once.

Oh my god. If the rocks are ground up and mixed into candy, because the magic makes the candy pleasantly tingly…

I’m with you on dwarf trafficking. I don’t understand how some people stoop so low.

I wouldn’t say never, but it seems like the kind of story that would kill the buzz. I like playing silly campaigns and it’s hard to be silly about such things. I have run stories where the party finds captive people and busts them out, but it usually isn’t a core component of the campaign plot. I have a storyline in the backlog that I’ve never used about sentient stones. Basically, magical crystals in the rock form neural networks. Some of them can think, some of them can communicate, but they are immobile and defenseless. they are routinely harvested for their magic crystals, and sometimes trafficked great distances. One of the campaign hooks centers around a stone that was used to prop up a table right next to a mill, close enough that it could hear the rocks scream as they slowly grind down to dust, every day, for years. It gets grim. I might run that one with the right table.

It’s not paranoia if everyone in the world is actually conspiring against you.

I don’t know what it says about my friends but their highest fantasy aspirations appear to revolve mostly around two things: petty larceny and profound larceny.

Is there anything magic crystals can’t do? I love a good doppelganger fight. I’ve wanted to do a campaign where, by some magic bullshit, a bizzaro world version of the party shows up that all have different facial and color palettes , but they’re actually competent, like they save towns and revitalize economies and are heroes, meanwhile my players are bumbling around like the gang from It’s Always Sunny.

Oh, the characters get duped constantly, 9 out of 10 thatch roof fires are the direct result of characters being thick, but if the character fails an INT roll the player is in on the joke. I mean like, getting the players themselves to fall for a gag.