InsurgentRat

Smoking: easy way to quit smoking plus weed during the worst withdrawal to avoid snapping at everyone

Weed (earlier lmao, I still use sometimes but less than a gram a year really): having other things to do that require concentration and memory I enjoy. Weed is easy as it’s mostly habitual. The sleeplessness is the worst and it’s only a couple of days

Opiates: Exercise, avoiding boredom (v hard! video games, gardening, easy books, podcasts etc), lots of walking those restless nights, preparing easy food for the worst few days, counting days to know it was going to end. Be careful after surgery kids that shit sucks to come off.

But I’m an insecure person. I speak maybe 100 words aloud a week outside of gaming.

It’s not easy to enforce rules without confience, much easier to build consensus than be a dictator

I’m not experienced at all! I’m dming my first campaign at the moment. I did play as a teenager in the 2000s but that was pathfinder which worked quite differently.

It does ask more of players, and it wont work with a group that doesn’t have the confidence to ask meta questions about the game but you can definitely foster that! when disputes come up there are multiple ways of handling things, I haven’t had any bad ones but 2 come to mind.

In one I didn’t adequately communicate to the players the threat of a foe and they felt frustrated, we just rewound time and tried again after a brief chat about non combat options. In another I just asked a player what they thought was fair and they ended up coming up with something reasonable.

I think there’s a harmful view that ttrpgs are like a meal the GM cooks and delivers to the players which they either enjoy or not rather than a collaboratory effort of mutual play. Players should add to scenes etc (e.g. “Is there/could there be a window we could jump from?”), be part of adjudication when it wont kill pacing or during tricky situations.

Like all play it requires trust, but that’s true in modern DnD too with all sorts of broken interpretations of rules and zany magic items etc. All games where players and DMs are adversaries break down.

I might be misunderstanding but what you’re talking about is basically just failures of a DM.

DMing osr style games requires being more than a simple automaton applying the rules. The systems are simple to allow you to spend your energy elsewhere. I’ll use OSE as an example as that’s what I’m currently DMing.

Let’s take perception. Firstly if something matters from a fun perspective it should be obvious. For example, if overcoming a trap is fun then the overcoming should involve play, not dice rolls which are there to abstract over tedious or uncertain play. For example a large magical fire blocking the corridor requires no perception but will involve a lot of experimentation to find a way past.

Or if we are wanting a perception roll like event: Lets say players are stuck and have no ideas for finding a secret door they think is likely there. Who are the characters? not their stats who are they? Ok someone was a farmer prior? huh ok. Give them a clue to follow like “hey Jake the farmer, you notice the air in this room smells familiar, there’s a maddening scent of petrichor which has no place on a dry stone chamber like this one” see what happens. Alternative if Jake asks for a clue ask Jake to describe some way in which who he is applies to the context and set an ability check for a true or false clue. Suddenly a lack of rules is freedom for players to build up their character mythos on the fly.

Likewise for player skill stuff. No reason a player needs to narrate a conversation anymore than swing an actual sword. If a player asks me if they can make an impassioned arguement based on legal precedent, a sense of justice, and the illegitimacy of a ruler who cannot protect their vassels to the King’s guard then they make such an argument as appropriate to their character’s level of skill.

The definition privileges action, which is why vegan philosophy is generally fine with stuff like foxes hunting birds but not humans hunting foxes to save birds.

Taking action to depress ants to save others would go against the ethos as defined:

“Veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of animals, humans and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.”

definitionally you aren’t vegan if environmental impact is your terminal goal. It would be like saying you’re Christian for the cathedrals or something.

Veganism is a philosophy and life practice of trying to minimise harm to other earthlings. It can involve environmentalism as an instrumental goal, that is protecting the environment to avoid mass suffering, but a world of perfect environmental preservation where all ants have depression would be unacceptable to a vegan but not to an environmentalist.

Many people with environmental goals adopt a plant based diet and/or lifestyle.

Ok then, go plant based but eat honey. If you agree with the rest you should do it.