I think people have radically different ideas about what “minimal background information” is.

Some people think the Silmarillion is a suitable primer for their setting.

Some people have like one paragraph for the big picture, and one paragraph for each major faction.

There are players that would say both is too much.

I think a couple short paragraphs should be enough for a quick start for a custom setting, but I’ve had players that just refuse to read anything at all. As someone else said, it’s makes it really hard to do some sort of stories if all the players are utter neophytes/amnesiacs/from-another-world/etc

I tried to do a game of Vampire once, but the players refused to read anything about the setting. All the political intrigue fell completely flat because they didn’t understand what the different factions were looking for, nor did they understand how vampires worked.

That group might have just been kind of bad players, but I feel like bad players are more common than good. By “bad” I mean “doesn’t think about the game very much, doesn’t retain anything about the story or rules”. They couldn’t really do anything more complex than a simple dungeon crawl.

What is the discomfort? Are you afraid something will happen?

You should probably talk to a professional about this. I am not a professional, alas.

I once has a girl follow up 2 weeks later asking why we didn’t go on a date? I told her that was the first question she asked me and I felt she wasn’t into the conversation.

I do wonder sometimes what they’re thinking. Like, do they think the conversation is going well when I have to keep resuscitating it?

I’m told people have “different communication styles”, which is fine, but “not asking questions and giving really short answers” doesn’t seem like an effective style here. Like, if someone’s chatting you up at the bar and you’re not interested, then giving short answers can make a kind of sense. But in a dating app where you both showed interest? If you’re no longer interested just unmatch.

No class consciousness. Too many tech workers think they’re rugged individuals that can negotiate their own contracts into wealth.

Working for free on nights and weekends to “hit that deadline” is not good. You’re just making the owners rich, and devaluing labor. Even if you own a lot of equity, it’s not as much as the owners.

And then there’s bullshit like return to office mandates and people are like “oh no none of us want to do this but there’s no organized mechanism to resist”

• Profiles with no hooks. They’ll have like 3 unremarkable pictures and a bio that says like “I like hanging out”. What is your match supposed to do with this? It’s extra bad if their bio says like “I hate small talk”.

Side note: small talk plays important roles in socializing and is an important skill. Use it to steer the conversation to interesting topics.

• Getting too in their head and bailing for flimsy reasons. Like, if the guy threatened you definitely do not continue. But I had a friend that was like “he was really sweet and lived nearby, but his hair was browner than his photos and I just wanted blonde”. Like what. That is not a good reason to bail.

No one’s going to be perfect. People are going to be nervous on a first date. Give them a chance.

• Conversely, sticking with a relationship too long. Contrary to the above, sometimes you really should call it. If the guy isn’t treating you with respect, you don’t have to keep going. If you realize you never look forward to seeing them, you should probably end it.

• Chatting too long before meeting. You’re not a real person to them when you’re just over text. You’re missing body language and tone. You want to meet in person quickly.

The general flow for me is like

• Initial message. Hopefully ask something about their profile
• if they respond well, maybe another couple follow up questions.
• clear any deal breakers. Eg: if you have a kid, ask “hey I just wanted to check you saw on my profile I have a toddler. Are you okay with that?”
• ask if they want to have a date in person to see if you get along
• schedule the date
• go on the date

If the online chat ends and you haven’t scheduled a date, but you want to, that’s bad. You don’t want to be having a second “hey what’s up?” tinder chat.

• related to the above: dead ending the chat. Don’t do that. Like, let’s pretend your profile says you love dragon age. They message you with “I’ve been a dragon age fan since origins! Did you play Veilguard yet? I’m thinking of starting it this weekend”. You respond with "I haven’t played it yet ". What the fuck kind of garbage reply is that? What is the other person supposed to do with that? They essentially have to send you another first message. Good first messages are hard! Give them something to work with. “I haven’t played it yet, but I loved origins! Always played mage. What was your favorite origin?” You almost always want to ask a question.

If this doesn’t come naturally to you , that’s fine. Just remember with your brain “always ask a question”. You need to give them something to work with.

• Don’t non sequitur into sexual details. Sorry, but them’s the norms. Like, a friend was chatting with a match about Star Trek and the guy out of the blue was like “so do you like anal?”. Unmatched.

And a last thought that ended up stranded at the bottom of this post, and I’m writing on my phone so editing is hard:

“But what about people who want to take it slow?” Do you want to date someone who doesn’t want to date? I don’t.

edit: minor error from autocorrect

I have never ever ever wanted to “just be friends” first. I am not looking for a new friend. I have friends. I am looking for intimacy that’s not typically available for friends, and sex.

Furthermore, the timeline and transition points for “just friends” to “dating” are not defined. If I want to kiss now but we’re on a “just friends” track, what do I do? Probably pursue someone who wants what I want, and not spin my wheels hoping the other person will come around

This does not sound like a very common experience.

What is it that makes you uncomfortable? Is it all scenarios? Coffee date? Bar date?

Yes, you can make players pre-plan. You nudge them.

No amount of nudging will make some players do anything. Some players are obstinate and frankly not very good, but honestly the solution to “this player won’t stop looking at their phone and their turns take forever” may be to remove them from the group.

Why does it matter how much time everyone takes?

I don’t want to wait 5 minutes for someone to dither and dither and finally decide “I attack”

https://archive.is/9kNLR

I just use archive.is for paywall breaking. Magic.

I didn’t vote for him and neither did anyone I know :(

This was a weirdly aggressive comment.

The solution is the pre-planning, which does not need a timer, nor is it a guaranteed result of a timer.

You cannot make players pre-plan. The timer encourages pre-planning, or at least rapid decision making on the fly. Both have the desired result of the game moving at a quicker pace.

It also has the benefit of creating an impartial tool for measuring, instead of relying on subjective “You’re taking a long time.” It is harder to argue with a clock. This is an advantage.

There was a problem, and in trying to fix it, the DM created a second problem.

What is the second problem?

I’m pretty sure it’s a pretty well known phenomenon that conspiracy theories funnel down into antisemitism

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/10/why-conspiracy-theorists-always-land-on-the-jews/671730/

I don’t know what point you were trying to make

Leaving people to go full Lord of the Flies on their sexual urges leads to violence and fear and resentment.

I don’t think this is unique to sex. Sex is often special-cased in ways I don’t think it really needs to be. We probably agree more than we disagree here.

By contrast, if your basic needs are guaranteed, sex as a profession becomes something you can choose as an entrepreneurial passion rather than a lifeline for your survival.

No argument here. Basic income and the essentials guaranteed would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. Certain members of the wealthy would be upset, though

This is idealistic, but I think for most people conspiracy stuff is filling an emotional need. If the experiment fails, the emotional problems remain. Thus the theory will be updated to uphold the feelings.

So like if they see a photo of the earth from space, they’re more likely to say it’s a fraud. Truth doesn’t matter. Feelings do.

Anyone who cares about facts on this topic would have left flat-earth after a short while on wikipedia.

So the question is: what emotional need is this filling, and how can it be met more safely?

Anti-vaxxers have hurt many people, but maybe you didn’t mean them when you said these people".

Flat-earth belief likely has secondary unwanted effects, like how all conspiracy theories eventually funnel into anti-semitism. It’s also a huge opportunity cost.

The other day I was updating something and a test failed. I looked at it and saw I had written it, and left a comment that said like “{Coworker} says this test case is important”. Welp. He was right. Was a subtle wrong that could’ve gone out to customers, but the wrong stayed just on my local thanks to that test.

This is a good post.

What we’re really getting boxed in by is the very idea of capitalist rent-seeking through the operation of a business. When you’re selling anything else, the rent-seeking is considered a value-generating profit motive of an entrepreneur. But as soon as what you’re selling involves sex worker’s services, we realize what we’re advocating is human trafficking.

This is a good point in particular. However, it slams into my go to hypothesis for why so many things are kind of bad: People are emotional first and sometimes exclusively so. It happens to all of us. But for most people, sex stuff feels bad in a way that rent-seeking doesn’t. You could make as many points as you want with irrefutable logic, flow charts, and diagrams, and it won’t get through the skittering heartbeat of “BUT IT FEELS BAD”

I don’t really know how to fix this. Dismantle conservative power structures that are centered around placating fear and disgust maybe? If sex work was normalized, in a couple generations many people would probably feel fine about it.

I would have questions about how they work with a team and structure.

Are they going to be okay with planning work out two weeks ahead? Sometimes hobbyists do like 80% of a task and then wander off (it’s me with some of my hobbies).

Are they going to be okay following existing code standards? I don’t want to deal with someone coming in and trying to relitigate line lengths or other formatting stuff, or someone who’s going to reject the idea of standards altogether.

Are they going to be okay giving and getting feedback from peers? Sometimes code review can be hard for people. I recently had a whole snafu at work where someone was trying to extend some existing code into something it wasn’t meant to do*, and he got really upset when the PR was rejected.

Do they write tests? Good ones? I feel like a lot of self taught hobbyists don’t. A lot of professionals don’t. I don’t want to deal with someone’s 4000 line endpoint that has no tests but “just works see I manually tested it”

I’ve definitely had some coworkers that in retrospect we should not have hired. But I’ve also had people I was iffy on that turned out great. Hiring is hard.