Senior Chief Petty Officer. Starfleet is in my blood, and I’ve spent my entire adult life in service to boldly going.

Keiko and Molly are my favorite humans, but Transporter Room 3 will always be my favorite.

Just don’t ask who what’s in the pattern buffer.

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Cake day: August 27th, 2024

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  • That’s literally what it feels like: being stuck in an objective (the planet) and you have a teammate that’s SUPER gung ho about the fact he’s got a bomb vest (nukes) on that will go off if he dies, and you’re just praying he doesn’t catch a stray round (attack) while shooting at people from the doorway (doing proxy war things or just straight up committing/supporting genocide/ethnic cleansing/war of extermination/etc) or lose connection (leadership going insane).

    If any of those things happen, you know you’re all toast. And it’s all mostly outside of your control.

    I hate to use video games as a metaphor for literal nuclear war and sorry for spelling it out like I’m talking to a child but I felt it was needed for clarity.

    We’re all on the planet together, and no one will ever be able to force everyone into submission, the more we fight the shorter time we have as a species.




  • I told him multiple times that if he was going to try and do his own thing, he won’t be participating with the group, and the group is the entire focus of the game.

    I suppose I could have made it more explicit that he could join the group or he could leave the game.

    I should add that that was many games ago, and he has since begun participating, although he often tries to go his own way and threatens to leave the group constantly, but so far he hasn’t actually tried leaving the group unless it was agreed upon for strategy reasons. (they split up inside a crypt in the most horror movie fashion possible)



  • I really need to do some kind of team building exercise before a game, something that they’ll want to do, but requires teamwork, just to demonstrate the point that they need to work together.

    When my first character did the whole “I’m gonna be all by myself because I’m a lone wolf” thing, the DM let me go off and the totally unexpected happened and my character got into a scuffle he wasn’t prepared for, but a group sure would have been.




  • Yeah, but this way you get to make sure your intended target actually gets hit instead of assuming the following nuclear wastwland would destroy your target like everything else.

    It’s like the Martyrdom perk in fps games. You die and drop a grenade or c4 pack or something and explode, hopefully taking out the person who killed you.

    It’s just a dead-man switch to get the AD part of MAD.

    Effective? Maybe.

    Incredibly stupid? Yes.

    Is that stopping the US and Russia from doing it? Lolno we invented this dumb shit.

    The world is run by insane people who would rather see the planet scorched into a lifeless rock than admit their way of doing things might be wrong.


  • I absolutely used to be that “my character is a quiet rogue-ish type that definitely wasn’t modeled after Aragorn when he was introduced at the Prancing Pony mixed with Robin hood” who always “had to be convinced” to join, and nobody ever called me out for it. I honestly wish they had because that’s annoying as fuck and you miss out on playing an actually fully developed character.

    Nowadays I tend to be less tactful that you are, but essentially tell people the same thing, or literally beat their characters over the head with ambushes.


  • I started running games for my wife and her niblings, and the oldest boy is getting into that “I’m such a rebel” phase where they think they’re bad ass for taking slightly longer to do a chore than needed and say “no” the first time you ask them to do something.

    He thought it was hilarious to have a character that refused to join the rest of the group, so I said “okay, you can stay at the inn if you want” and then proceeded to intentionally ignore anything he was saying or doing, leaving him out of rolls, and never addressing him.

    He’s 12 and started literally crying to his mother about how we’re all being mean to him. Apparently “he had the opportunity to participate and chose not to” wasn’t a good enough response to his mother. I stand by my choice. Although my wife managed to convince me to let him “rejoin” at the next town/session.

    He doesn’t pull that shit anymore though, when he’s playing he’s playing or he gets shut out again.

    Genuine question to anyone reading: does that make me a bad DM? If so, suggestions on how to handle it?


  • I’m a big fan of “you all wake up in loincloths sitting in a wagon, hands bound” and as long as someone at the table can roll higher than a 1, they can break free.

    Or something attacks them while they’re all in a tavern

    Basically I’m a fan of “you could ignore having your shit kicked in, but will you?” since so many players would stop at nothing.

    Fallout NV had the right idea. “Where’s that little fucker who shot me in the head?!”