My daughter is also due in September. I know that its just the voice for the first few months. So I got to practice my reading outload. My wife says I rush when reading to her belly. In my defense Heading Home with Your Newborn is important but not the easiest to talk through

Its never to early to read The Hobbit to get someone a lifelong addiction to the LoTR. I was trying for in-utero but my wife was not interested.

That would be fun. Every game would just be a series of different fetch quests with a rotated list of the same enemies. Like a MMRPG but worse and more expensive

ChatGPT give some pretty generic DnD advice. I can’t wait until they make a terrible automated DM. I can’t wait to play the most generic DnD of all time.

I like the changes with weapons properties and I like some of the updates with various classes for some improvements to the weaker subclasses and feats. I overall enjoyed the majority of the changes.

However, from what I have heard and seen I did not enjoy the changes to the Monster Manual and statblocks.

Gross. I was really excited for 5.5 for a while but don’t really want to get it anymore. I liked the PHB class upgrades when I read it but don’t own anything from it yet

I love Christ Perkin and Jeremy Crawford. Who is even running D&D now? They are literally the only people I knew still on the project. They are both great. Were they forced out of WoTC?

And that brick was thrown by a trans woman. That’s a definitely fact for sure

I think independent social media like the Fediverse has uses with any group who would appreciate local control and free expression. I think the witchy community would fit that bill. I am unaware of any projects about it. At a certain point of users it would be inevitable just need someone connected enough to get it started.

Unrelated but I figured at a some point sex workers would flock here. Locally controlled by sex workers for sex workers would be a huge sell because they can’t be kicked off by arbitrary rules.

If you are really interested in learning more about infidelity I would suggest you read / listen to Dan Savages’s columns / podcast. Unsurprisingly there are a lot of different calls and discussions about fidelity and monogamy. I would also suggest you read Ester Perel groundbreaking novel The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity

To answer your question directly infidelities are fairly common because monogamy is difficult and society typically puts a lot of stress and pressure on monogamy that makes it even more difficult. The foremost is the idea that monogamy as a default setting and that one person can be everything for one person sexually, emotionally etc… So we have a situation where two people are assuming that their partner will be the only person they can be attracted to, the one person that can fulfill all their emotional needs and will have to be a perfect roommate / life mate. This coupled with the idea that you have to be perfect at monogamy or you are a complete failure at it. So you have a hard situation and hard expectations so people slip and some people who slip on something small (a micro-cheating which is a ridiculous concept) they go all the way. All these expectations are common in “Straight-land” while those in “queer-land” have a different set of expectation that work better for everyone.

We should all make monogamy an regular opt-in conversation for relationships (I would suggest ~6 months in when you go exclusive and then at most every 5 years). Moreover, we should understand our monogamist partner finds other people attractive and chooses to not pursue anything not that they don’t find anyone else attractive. Finally, we should understand a our partner needs friends, hobbies and confidant who are not us to rely on. Until that happens “cheating” will likely remain something that happens fairly regularity

I was thinking saying that expecting precision from a natural product is a fools errand. So embrace the imperfection and go crazy

I was a professional chemist for around ~7 and love to cook. My suggestion is to stop expecting precision with an imprecise and natural product like cooking. Are your lemons larger? They also might be sweeter, tarter, juicer etc. than others. Same thing with teaspoons. The spices you are using may be more or less concentrated than who wrote it.

Lean into the uncertainty and be free. Double or even triple spices to see if you like it. Measure with your heart

My wife also has a better sense of smell then me. We don’t fight about it but I have spent a bunch of time trying to find the phantom smell.

She’s pregnant now and her super smell is even more potent. So I had to do a lot of kitchen cleaning and I had to a lot of cooking. It’s a thing for sure

I have blocked a few communities which I have really enjoyed. I think there is definitely a different but freeing experience to be in charge of curating your experience instead of algorithms doing it for you. It’s more work but the freedom is nice but making the constant choice feels hard.

Same.

To combat this you can fill a heat tolerant water bottle with some boiled water, wrap it in a shirt or sweater to prevent burning, and put it into your sleeping bag to warm it up quickly.

The first time I did this I ended up so hot that I had to take it out. Its a wonderful trick and I have woken up spooning the cool water bottle in the morning

Role-playing game isn’t about miniatures

I feel like miniatures is a separate and interrelated hobby. I don’t really enjoy it but its nice to have something physical for combat. That being said free VTTs do so to replace the need for that.

It’s not about the ogre, it’s about whether choices have an impact on the story.

This is exactly my point is that by relying on it constantly there is no actual real choice and its just lying about railroading the players. If I have the choice about going to clear out the undead in the forbidden temple or clear out the bandits on the outskirts of town and behind the scenes its the same dungeon map I will never know nor will I care. But if I go to kill the undead at the forbidden temple and end up at the bandit camp why make this choice? I love being able to re-use material like this, (In fact I had a dungeon that was an extra-dimensional space where the players got to choose between monsters and demons which used the same map). Same thing if a group of assassins is coming to attack the party and they are deciding between going shopping or the spa. The assassins will find them either way at whatever place they are doing. This is a great use. But if I heard rumor about these assassins and attempt to hide from them but no matter what I do they will always find me that is removing choice.

I think its more of an advanced technique that given as some beginner friendly advice. Its easy to use it all the time to reduce agency instead of using it sparingly.

If you are dungeon mastering I would recommend avoiding the Quantum Ogre as much as possible. The idea here is to use the same encounter depending on whatever decision the party chooses. This is tempting because this reduces prep work and can reuse information. However, if the decision doesn’t have any consequence why make the players make this decision? TTRPG are about collaborative story telling so decisions so matter and if they don’t why am I even playing. If you want to reduce your prep maybe have the same monsters but at least change the terrain or starting criteria.

If there is decision lead clues about what might be different between the options if it is important decision. These clues might not be obvious but that is what skills checks are for. Make decisions worthwhile so players feel engaged

https://www.npr.org/ and https://www.mprnews.org/ are my go to sources