Hello,
The reason I’m posting this is really for one reason; to clear up any sort of misinformation and misunderstandings of what the DSVA experience was like, but also to speak on other NATSAP program experiences since so many people here believe that these programs are nothing more than “labor camps” and “punishments for youth”.
Allow me to clear the air a little.
Now, I’m not here to discredit anyone’s negative experience or to say your experience wasn’t traumatic in any way. I’m not here to tell you that you can’t feel the way you feel about these places. My condolences go to the family’s or friends that have lost a loved one because of these programs. May they rest in peace.
I’m here to shed some light on this topic in a perspective, from someone that lived it, that maybe you haven’t considered yet.
Let me start by sharing a lil info about me. My name is Ian. I am 23 years old. Born and raised in Wisconsin later moved to North Carolina where I live today. My life hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. If I were to go into full detail of all the major life events that led me to who I am today, it would probably take me a whole day to share completely the full “trauma” of my “troubled youth”. Nobody likes that guy anyway, so I’ll spare you the bullshit.
Here’s some credibility to the naysayer’s, who I’m sure are gonna ride me up and down for this post.
Lacrosse juvenile detention center (WI): 14-15 years old In and out for weeks-months
New vision wilderness program (WI): 15 years old 3 months
Winnebago mental health institute (WI): 15 years old 1 month
New vision wilderness program (WI): (Yes I went a second time) 15 years old 2 months
Montford Hall residential substance abuse treatment center and therapeutic boarding school for boys (NC): 15-16 years old 6 months (Court ordered for a year, kicked out for being unmanageable)
Second nature/blue ridge wilderness program (GA): 16 years old 1 month
Mission hospital Copestone (NC): 16 years old 2 weeks
Discovery School of Virginia for boys (VA): 16-17 years old 1 year
In total:
1 - juvenile detention center 2 - psych wards 3 - wilderness programs 2 - boarding schools
I wasn’t at home from the age of 15-17 years old. All my birthdays and holidays were spent in some jail cell, institution, or some program somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Calling ourselves survivors is absurd. There was never any real danger to your life, you and I both know that. (Again, this is directed more towards the people that have either attended some of the same programs/treatments or have attended a place very similar to it.) Especially at DSVA or any wilderness program.
We were fed three times a day with edible food, full portions, even including snacks now and then. We were given clean drinking water. We were able to practice good hygiene, like brushing your teeth twice a day, taking warm showers, given clean towels and clothes that bested the outdoors, even toilet paper to wipe your own ass. Our sleep schedule was better than that of what we have today, at least 8 hours of sleep. I remember having about 10 hours of sleep every single night. And no matter where we laid our head at night, we always had something over us to protect us from the elements. Whether it was a tarp, a tent, or for the lucky ones, a literal roof.
Everything that I have just listed above is every humans basic needs for survival. Something the programs I attended always made sure we had. To call ourselves survivors means we were battling death in order to live. When was there ever a situation at these programs where you were in a life or death scenario? Coming from someone that has hiked in -20 degree blizzards of northern wisconsin and worked in 90 degree humidity in the clay of Virginia, sounds pretty over dramatic buddy.
When I first heard of people calling themselves “survivors” that went to similar programs as me, I had to laugh. It’s such a ridiculous thing to say and I always get second hand embarrassment. I have never once in my life considered myself a “survivor” of these programs because if it wasn’t for ME and MY ACTIONS, I wouldn’t be there in the first place.
The only logical explanation I would accept for anyone here wallowing in their own self-pity is that you didn’t actually work the program. What I mean by that is that you “faked it till you made it” and you put on this smile pretending everything was all good in your world so that nobody called on you when it came time to work on yourself.
To tell you the truth, we used to pick on kids like that in my group. You were perceived as weak by your group mates if you couldn’t talk about the things that hurt you, especially with a bunch of guys that your forced to live with everyday. If you didn’t want to fess up to your issues, we made sure to call a group meeting so you could get that off your chest. Why? Because it’s not about you. It’s about the group, and if one man has a bad day, then the whole group has a bad day. We’re not saying you can’t have a bad day, but we’re not gonna let you slow down the group because of it.
That was group Dakota DSVA 2016-17 right there baby. We were always on top, always eating in the lodge, never had some kid ruining our fun because we didn’t rock with that selfish crap. You want to cry about having to dig out a tree stump with Mr. Outland all day or push wheelbarrows all day? Tough luck kid, we all had to do it at one point or another. Grow a pair and keep your head up.
Most of the kids that complained about everything were the rich kids with daddy’s money who never spent a night outside their bougie gated community. LOL. You know who you are. All mad because their parents wouldn’t let their spoiled kid buy drugs with their money anymore. Sorry you got “gooned” buddy. Each time I showed up to a program I was in shackles and chains, cry harder.
Some people here will probably think what I’ve said so far is insensitive, maybe even harsh, but I ask you, what good does it do you to complain constantly about what happened to you in the past? Have you benefited from whining about what happened to you at these places?
I used to think and react the same way you people did not too long ago. I used to have that victim mentality. I’d walked around crying “woe is me”, but nothing changed. The world kept spinning and I felt like I was left behind in a world that could never understand the mental anguish I received from these “horrible” places.
Turns out I was right, they could never understand. Why? Because they never experienced it, but we did. That makes us stronger in so many ways. I used to feel sad that I never took a cute girl to prom, only to realize that while people were finishing up high school in some boring class, I was going from state to state backpacking and hiking for miles. Living outside for months on end, battling the elements, making amazing friends, reaching new destinations and seeing amazing views. I was doing things that my peers today will probably never get to experience in their lifetime. It gave me a feeling of pride that I still cherish to this day. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
It hurt not being home. I hated my parents for allowing the courts to keep sending me to these places. I refused to write them, but I knew it wasn’t their fault. It was me who put myself in those programs, not the court, not my family, I alone made my life that way, because of my actions. Not being able to be at home with my sister, who grew up without her older brother for 3 years, that broke my heart. When my parents were allowed to visit me it was a special occasion full of celebration, especially when I got to see my little sister again. All my hard work to see my family each time made me feel not just accomplished, but a happiness that I rarely feel today. It reminds me of how grateful I am for my family, and forgiving me for the hell that I put them through in my former years.
I used to think I deserved an apology for what I went through. I’ve taken my accountability, where’s the sympathy for me? I blamed everyone else for what happened to me, and maybe there’s some truth in that, but when I considered how I got to these programs it made me realize how wrong I was. I used to think the reason I was in those programs was because my parents didn’t want to parent me, or that the court system failed me.
Nah, it’s because I was a troubled kid. With a lot of anger and a lot of pain that no ordinary therapist could even begin to scratch the surface of. I needed that tough love that I never got, and if it wasn’t for these programs, I wouldn’t be who I am today. Someone who is happy with what they’ve got.
Anyways, take what you will from all of this. I just wanted to put this out there for the world to see in case somebody sees it and realizes they relate to it. Our past doesn’t have to define us, and it can make us warriors instead of victims. Nobody’s gonna make that decision for you. It’s up to you to create a brighter future.

Hi everyone….i need some help. I’ve been with my husband for 8 years, married for 1.5. He is currently out of the country to visit family, a trip I was totally fine with and glad he is able to go on. I was in a bad car accident earlier this year and I was out of work for 3 months so I don’t have any sick time left (unless I take in unpaid) until July 1st.
This is probably the longest my husband and I have been apart since we moved in together. He’s gone for 12 days. We have a dog and 2 cats but no kids. So I was really nervous about him leaving because I’m going to miss him plus he’s been doing alot of things around the house like more dog walks and lifting heavy things because I really messed up my back in the car accident I was in and he does most of the “lifting” since I can’t. (I’m hopefully having back surgery over the summer but I have 11 herniated discs and finding the source of the pain is hard)
But other than that heavy lifting he does he’s not great at other house hold chores and the mental labor of the relationship. Like buying the gifts for family parties, scheduling house maintenance or vet appts. The things that generally fall on the female part of the partnership and are exhausting by hard to articulate or visualize.
Since he’s been gone I of course miss him, but life has been much easier. I do about 1/3 of the laundry and the dishes. The first 5-7 days I slept so much because I think I was just that exhausted. It was awesome that all the house chores were done on Friday within a few hours of getting home from work and then sat and Sunday I was able to work my part time job or just…sleep.
I want to be clear, him and I not having a good balance on household tasks does not make him a bad husband or mean we need a divorce. He was diagnosed with ADHD last year and has been doing much better with time blindness and executive function and we’ve talked about household tasks before and in my head I think we were doing better but based on how hard I crashed this week, I am clearly still shouldering way too much, also combined with I went back to work way too early but needed to go the $$.
I did mention to my husband that we need to have a talk about the current decision of labor once he gets home. So how do we do this. I feel like we need a visual for how much I am doing that goes towards the couple benefit vs how much he is doing so we can split it more equally. I know he will be open to it but I need a way for him to see it because me just saying “I need you to help out around the house more” is bs because he’s not “helping” me, he’s cleaning up after his own mess. Part of me wants to say for 2 weeks we seperate food and laundry. So he can see how much more dishes he produces that me (we works and cooks at home 2x a week) and how much more laundry he produces since he works out and I can’t right now. Otherwise I’m thinking maybe a chore chart to show what we are all doing but I haven’t found any that track the emotional labor part well.
I am open to suggestions and appreciate your help!

I made this post the other day however have had another player drop out with potentially another one, I am looking for an additional player. MUST have a microphone.

As a heads up The first session is tomorrow Thursday 22/05/24 11AM AEST (I know it may be fast and I apologise)

Welcome everyone!
I'm a relatively new DM who has had some very brief experience running as a DM during my highschool years and have recently become engrossed back in the world of DnD. I have been experimenting over the past several months with running a game with some old friends and have been having a blast, due to the long gaps between sessions I am setting up a second campaign alongside my homebrew world of Altaria!
The game is going to a traditional medieval fantasy/classic adventuring tale within the lands of Altaria, with a focus on political intrigue and consequences between kingdoms which can be influenced by the players and their actions. A focus will be on role play. I am continuously updating the lore of the world with new organisations and locations. For your commitment I will always try to create a handcrafted map or battlescene for the session.
I have 2 friends who are already keen to join and am looking for another 1 players to join along.
Session Outline
I plan on running a D&D campaign via a mix of Foundry VTT and discord. The sessions will run most likely every week, Due to my employment in emergency services my roster is constantly changing making setting a specific/regular session difficult and will require everyone to be slightly flexible.
I will try to have sessions set up every week or 2, most likely on Wednesdays or fridays, session start times ranging from ~1100-1700 AEST. Depending on everyone's availability. the Session length itself I am aiming for is ~4 hours with a break in between.
I am planning on having this be a long-term campaign if you do not believe you can commit please reconsider applying
New players are most certainly welcome! If you need I will help guide you both with setting up characters, teaching you rules and how to use the programs.
World Setting/Description
Discovering Altaria, a continent veiled in mystery and allure, marked a pivotal moment for explorers from the old world. Millennia ago, these adventurers first set foot in what is now known as Wavecrest, but it was the fertile expanses of the mainland that truly captivated their ambitions. Cities and towns emerged along bustling trade routes, flourishing rapidly and soon overshadowing the initial settlement on Wavecrest. The burgeoning civilizations reached heights of prosperity previously unimaginable, until the world was shaken by the "Great Evanescence." Communication with the old world abruptly ceased; ships that set sail to reconnect vanished into the void, sparking fears of a catastrophic demise of the old continent or the wrath of divine or malevolent forces.
In the ensuing chaos, the Eldorian Empire rose to prominence, leveraging its control over fertile lands and the allegiance of migrating nobles and craftsmen to establish a new order. This era of uneasy peace, upheld by Eldoria's military dominance, persisted for centuries. However, complacency and neglect, coupled with the earth-shattering discovery of a new mystical metal, Atherium in the Mountains of Last Ridge within the provence of Verdantia, set the stage for upheaval. This arcane material, promising wealth and power, ignited the flames of envy, particularly in the eyes of the waning Eldorian Empire main counties. The empire's attempts to monopolize Atherium sparked a fierce rebellion by the now new Kingdom of Verdantia, plunging the realm into a devastating conflict known as "The Great Sundering." The war raged, reshaping landscapes and redefining borders, with neither side securing a decisive victory.
The stalemate was broken only when the combined forces of Stoneshield, the Timorian Realm, and Wavecrest intervened, presenting an ultimatum that ultimately led to a grudging peace. In the treaty that followed, Eldoria relinquished control of the western territories, paving the way for the formation of the "Three Leagues," to manage distribution of Atherium through the continent, while Verdantia gained the right to retain control of Atherium production and retaining its new found sovereignty. Although peace has prevailed for five years, unease simmers as reports of raids along the kingdoms' borders escalate.
Amidst political tensions, the presence of magical and monstrous beings adds layers of complexity to the realm. While sightings are rare in civilized areas, the increasing frequency of such encounters has prompted many to form adventuring groups or guilds. Magic, revered for its power, remains an uncommon and dangerous art, commanding respect and fear in equal measure. Those who dare to underestimate its potency often face dire consequences.
In this intricate tapestry of alliances, rivalries, and arcane mysteries, Altaria stands as a realm teeming with potential adventures, challenges, and untold stories, waiting to be discovered by those brave enough to venture into its depths.
Rules
18+ content is allowed within reason - Gore and NSWF are allowed. However, nothing extreme eg. sexual assault, rape etc.
No PVP, Exceptions depend on the situation and both parties must consent.
Be respectful towards myself and other players, Try to be a team player, do not steal or ruin the game for everyone else (that includes fudging roles)
No meta-gaming, please try to put yourself into the mind of your character. try not to yell out at other players during their turn.
Let me know if there is an issue, dont let it brew. whether it be from something I'm doing, or if it is another player. This is a game where we are all trying to have fun and I will try to make it the best I can.
Ultimately the rules are up to my discretion, I may make a decision in a situation that is not strictly allowed for either comedic value or for the fun of the game (TLDR Rule of Cool)
Please try to show up on time for our sessions, I know life can get in the way. If something does occur or you have another event please let me know beforehand. if you frequently do not show or respond I will take it as a sign of your disinterest and remove you from the party. I will give you fair warning before this occurs.
Know your characters abilities and how they work, if you are new again I can run through it with you before the session.
DEATH RULES - I am going to take inspiration from Critical role regarding death rules, if a character dies there is going to be a chance that they stay dead. They are able to be revived however it will be both an expensive and laborious process with a chance of failure! (remember retreat is always an option!)
I will not be fudging roles, I believe that the game becomes much more enjoyable if there is a chance of failure, creating suspense and risk.
RP will be a key element of the game, however you can't justify a blatantly evil action as "its what my character would do"
Pay attention when playing, I am putting extensive effort into creating this world and game for you, this includes in combat try to have your turn prepared before it reaches you.
Applying
Righto almost done with the wall of text :P, if you are interested either message me on reddit or my discord name (Runieman),
Maps
Continent of Altaria - https://inkarnate.com/m/wo08p2/
Continent of Alaria Political - https://inkarnate.com/m/qgrEDA/
Descriptions
World Description - https://inkarnate.com/m/RlJlQM/
Eldorian Empire - https://inkarnate.com/m/wo08Ve/
Kingdom of Verdantia - https://inkarnate.com/m/O7GGm7/
Three Leagues - https://inkarnate.com/m/oy0vLk/
Timorian Realm - https://inkarnate.com/m/X7gwvQ/
Stoneshield Dominion - https://inkarnate.com/m/ZV0bxQ/
Petty Kingdom of Wavecrest - https://inkarnate.com/m/Vmqv73/
The Whitevale - https://inkarnate.com/m/KwOwmQ/
Thanks for reading!

I really never know how much context to give these stories to get a well rounded picture lol. Me and my boyfriend have been dating for 2 years, 24F & 25M.
He has a white picket fence life. Still lives with parents (we’re getting a place together soon). Has a really great job. Good relationship with siblings and parents, relatively no qualms besides chronic depression. I’ve had a diff up bringing. Broken home, moved out at 20/ have funded everything myself since 16, bumpy relationship with mom/ dad, good job(s), lives alone, blah blah blah. Diagnosed & medicated for bipolar, chronic anxiety and depression, etc., You get the picture.
To start it off, I’ve always struggled with depression/ anxiety but for the most part am super high functioning and medicated. I’ve gained a lot of weight from one of my meds so I’m slowly tapering off of it and I’ve literally just fallen into a deep depression. Go figure.
He’s also struggled with depression/ body image issues. Both of us have really worked to not let our mental interfere with us. Something we’ve really struggled with is his need to be in the gym for like 3 hrs a night 5 days a week religiously. If the schedule goes out of whack he gets down. Reddit users are pretty harsh but this is a pretty reasonable issue and I do empathize with him for it. I can’t imagine missing one thing a day and have my entire week thrown off kinda thing (I mean I can but you get the point). And no he’s not cheating lol. Sometimes I’ll post something related to the whole gym issue on Reddit and everyone’s like he’s gotta have another girl!!! Lol.
So to put it plainly; in addition to my meds issue, I’m moving. I’m so overwhelmed because yanno, mental illness plus something as chaotic as moving is ehhhh. I find solace in peace at home. I’m a very big introvert. And my home is anything but peaceful right now lol. I also have severe and chronic back pain, have since I was like 16 bc scoliosis, then recent weight gain, and my work desk not being ergonomically at the moment— so these back issues makes anything I want to do in life harder and adds to my bleh. Add in the fact I’ve tried many mattresses and finally had to bite the bullet and spend FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS on one (tempur). Just as I got ahead of my bills too. Fml. I work two jobs (doesn’t help the back pain). And I got rejected from a job I really wanted because of bullshit. I know the other candidate and she’s got no where’s near the experience I did. I can handle job rejection it’s apart of life but this one stung a lot because I was confident and so sure I blew them out of the water (I know someone in the department so that’s why I have all this extra info). So to lose it for virtually no reason besides the systems rigged, is fucking annoying. 3 (of the 8) people on my team at work are on extended medical leave and work has been CRAZY. I work in oncology and the doctors are so far up my ass because we’re behind despite me working OD overtime. Anyways. I went on a rant of all the shitty things rn bc I have a point to make lol.
Idk. I just expected my boyfriend to be a bit more helpful tangibly. Make my life easier. Help me with something. He’s super supportive verbally but like idk I just expect something more than what he’s giving me. Like take a day off of the gym and say hey babe ik you’re under stress let me help you. I’ll do your dishes. I’ll help you pack. Anything really.
He is helping me move and I’m grateful for that, obviously, but I just want to know if I’m taking out my frustrations on him because she’s the closest to me or am I reasonable for wishing he’d drop his life for mine?
Also note he’s taking Thursday- Tuesday to stay with me and help me settle in. I think what sparked this is because today he stopped by to go on a walk with me and despite me being in my pot of misery, he still went to gym. Seemed insensitive. I want to be babied. Ok maybe this is a daddy issue thing?
Pls no advice on compromising. I can think of a million ways to compromise and make both parties happy, I just really want to know if me being upset is valid. I haven’t brought the issue to him yet just because I don’t want to shit on his parade just bc my life rn is <. I really am open to constructive criticism so if I’m being a diva please tell me I need to hear it. My head is not on straight given everything which is why I’m here wondering do I even have a reason to be upset or am I being a lot.
And like we all know Reddit is a cruel harsh world but just try to take it easy on me rn I’m fragile lol.
TL;DR! Am I unreasonable for wanting my boyfriend to be a lot more helpful than he currently is because my life sucks right now?

TLDR: it's possible to set a fractional percentage to transfer. Instructions below.
Tangerine has a feature called "pay yourself first" (on the "money rules" page) which lets you set up an automatic transfer between your accounts triggered by income matching a certain filter. It lets you set a particular percentage of the income to transfer to another account.
I wanted to use this to set aside portions of my income corresponding to my expected effective tax rate for the year, and also for the GST I need to collect. My GST remittance rate is 3.6% of gross income, so I wanted one of these "pay yourself first" rules to be 3.6%.
However, Tangerine's interface will only let you specify a whole number for the percentage.
This bothered me, since that discrepancy could add up to a fair amount over the year. I emailed Tangerine and they responded with "unfortunately we would not be able to make this change to our Money Rules feature at this time".
But I wasn't so sure -- it jumped out at me that the rules I'd set up showed the configured percentage to 2 decimal places. Why would they show that if it was always an integer?
So I went back to the form to edit the rule, opened up the browser dev tools, made the edit, and looked at the data sent back and forth. I duplicated and tweaked the request which had gone out to send a fractional number rather than a whole number, sent it, and saw that it was accepted.
The UI now showed that fractional amount, and I waited for my next pay to come in to see if it had really worked, and sure enough, it did.
It's frustrating that their system supports it, and so does their display UI, but their data entry UI does not, and it's more frustrating that they don't seem to care.
But in case it would help anybody else, here's how to work around their bad UI.
These instructions are for the Firefox browser. It would presumably be similar in Chrome and Safari.

1. Add a "pay yourself first" rule. Set any whole number percentage.
2. Get yourself to its "edit" page, by clicking its "change money rule" link, then the vertical 3-dots, then "edit rule".
3. Open up the developer tools. Find them at menu -> more tools -> web developer tools, or it's control-shift-i.
4. Click to the "network" tab of the developer tools panel.
5. In the main browser window, where you haven't actually changed anything, click the "update rule" button.
6. You'll see a few rows appear in the network panel. Find the one which has POST in the "method" column and edit-recipes in the "file" column. Right-click it, and choose "edit and resend".
7. A new panel will open up. At the bottom is a section called "body". In this section, scroll until you find "pay_yourself_first_percentage":3 where 3 is the temporary percentage you'd added. It was very close to the very end for me, so you might want to scroll to the very end, then slowly back until you find it.
8. Change that number to whatever percentage you'd like, so 3.6 in my case.
9. Click "send". You can then hide that panel with an icon at its top right.
10. You'll find another POST edit-recipes row has appeared in the network requests list. If it has a 200 status it should have worked fine. To double check, you could click that row, then change to the "response" tab in the other panel ("headers", "cookies", "request", etc), and expect to see status_code: "SUCCESS". You can close the developer tools with the × at top right.
11. Go back to your "money rules" page, do a full page refresh, and expect to see your chosen fractional percentage.

YMMV; worked for me.

Ayo,
My name is Bread (He/Him) 23 years old. I've been wanting to run Monsterhearts 2 ever since I first learned about it 2 years ago. I attempted to way back when but I was nowhere near experienced enough to run this game how it called for. I needed hard rails or else I was lost. However now after playing and Dming a bunch of different systems and working out how I am as a game master, I think I'm ready to dive in. I will most likely make mistakes and it won't be perfect, however, I feel confident now that I can create a game that I can be proud of.
Some things to keep in mind: (Borrowed from another post I found)
•Keep Your Hearts Safe: Monsterhearts is a system that can deal with heavier topics, such as dysfunctional relationships, teen sexuality, coercive power, trauma, abuse, violence, and queer marginalization. It is a game that encourages us to dive deep into the psychology and mental psyche of the characters. We won't shy away from more difficult subjects and you should be warned of that.
•None May Pierce The Veil: While all I said above is true, we will also have firm red lines that will most likely be established in session 0. This is still a game, primarily intended to be fun. The players and MC will have their chances to express what they are comfortable or not comfortable with. Subjects that fall into the later category will either not be displayed at all in the game or be exclusively fade to black scenes.
Game Synopsis:
You are entering your senior year at River Fork High. Have you been there all 4 years? Are you a new student? Whatever you decide to be one thing is for sure. Your life is messy. Your life is complicated, along with everyone else in this small town we call Sinsdale, Illinois. This town has been around for hundreds of years. A once thriving town centered around the chopping and selling of the finest, and strongest wood in the United States has quickly turned into a shell of its former self. Although you most likely don't care about that. You're just trying to survive high school. The Bullies, the Jocks, the Nerds, the Popular kids. All in their own groups and in their own heads. Where will you find yourselves? Who will you relate to? Who will you try to be?
In any case, how will you fit into not only this school but the entire town? The town that never seemed quite right, that always seemed that no matter how hard or little you looked, it wasn't completely normal. Maybe that is why this particular phrase is used by the oldest or most weary occupants of Sinsdale: Be Back Before Ten.
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While it may seem like I have the entire setting figured out, in reality, all I have figured out is the name of the town and a very brief history that can change. I have the name of the school, and a catchy tagline which depending on what we do in the game can become more real or just stay as it is.
At every step of the way, especially during session 0 I will be asking you questions to fill out the town and the school and overall the world. Im ultimately looking for players who will take risks and initiate drama in the messiest of senses. We will be collaborating in real-time to tell the exaggerated story of these monsters in teen form and if that sounds like a story you are wanting to be a part of, feel free to apply!

• We will be using Discord for voice and cameras are really encouraged but not mandatory. I most likely will be using a webcam. What is important is a quality enough mic.

-We will be using Roll20 to roll.
-This game is 18+ Only
-I am leaning towards not allowing custom skins but am still mulling it over.
If all that sounds good to you. Please fill out the form here and I will get back to you when I can to talk over voice! https://forms.gle/Zc2tGsqYUPvd9c4d7

For reference, I'm lvl 98 galactic commander and I've played at least 100 games with the spear against the automatons, and a couple of times against the bugs.
The spear is supposed to be an anti-tank weapon that can lock on to distant enemies. Not that complicated in terms of design, yet it fails to do either consistently.
We are all aware that the lock on is jank, which already makes it frustrating. But even when it does lock on and you manage to fire the missile before it forgets its target, this does not gurantee the target dies.
I cannot stress how bad it feels to finally get the missile to launch, watch it fly towards it's target, and either miss completely (gunships) or watch it collide with a tank, and it just calmly turns around as if all I did was knock on the door. So I load another round, watch it make contact with the same tank a second time, and IT'S STILL ALIVE. WTF? I can only carry THREE missiles on my back. You're telling me I need ALL THREE to kill ONE TANK? It's an anti-TANK missile. You can't look me in the eye with a straight face and tell me this apple doesn't taste like bacon.
I've even watched the missile collide with fabricators and not kill them. I've tried repositioning so the missile will hit the top half of the fab, and I watch the missile collide again doing nothing. If the third doesn't blow it up, I straight up log off. I usually pair the spear with the shield relay and 2 sentries, and I can't blow up the fab with stun grenades so I'm just stuck there waiting for someone else to blow it up or call in supplies/new spear just to waste 3 more rockets and not blow it up. (While I'm thinking about it, why can't the autocannon sentry blow up fabs? Or hell, why not the mortar? Honestly seems like a bug to me seeing as they will both waste all their ammo trying to blow up fabs, and they both work for bug holes)
It just feels like a slap in the face that the highest level anti-tank weapon can't even kill a tank without using all the ammo on your back. The auto-cannon can kill a tank from behind in like, what, 3-5 shots? Leaving over 90% of it's ammo supply still available for engagements? If the auto cannon is the king of balance for support weapons, then they have to make the spear more consistent so you don't blow through all your ammo on one heavy/fab.
Factory striders and bile titans I understand not being one shots. (However, I don't understand why the spear one shots Bile Titans to the face while EAT and recoiless do not - face contains brain, you hit face with rocket = brain dead. That's how it should work) Regardless, I have seen the spear one-shot tanks, and I think this only happens when the missile comes down from above making contact with the TOP of the cannon. If it hits the side of the cannon, you're SOL. I swear I've even watched it make contact with the heat-sink and it didn't explode.
I'm not sure how to properly fix this. If you change the Spear trajectory, it might not be able to properly target a Bile Titans face anymore. And if you nerf the parts on the tank, you might end up with certain weapons being able to kill tanks when they shouldn't.
IMO, they should buff the damage on all of the anti tank launchers. Make it so spear can two-shot titans in the same spot, one-shot tanks without hitting weakspot, and so EAT and recoiless can one-shot titans to the face. This would not only improve the spears inconsistency with tanks and bile titans by decreasing the minimum amount of shots to kill, but also make more variable loadouts useful against the bugs because you won't feel as forced into taking anti-titan eagles/orbitals if someone on your team brings an AT-launcher. Titans are too tanky anyways. There's no reason they should be able to tank over 6-7 rockets, that's just absurd and drags out encounters when you don't have strategems available. Bile titans should never take more than 4 shots from EAT/recoiless and no more than 2 from spear in the same spot. Anything more just feels unreasonable. Same goes for spewers, like why tf does a rocket launcher not one-shot the super bloated bug filled with liquid when a tiny grenade does?
Fabricators could probably be fixed pretty easily by using the same durable part value for the entire structure, instead of having weird pockets with higher armor that prevent the spear missile from doing any damage. And for the love of liberty, either let the sentries blow up fabs, or remove fabs from the sentry targeting list. They don't appear to be armored and they contain delicate manufacuring equipment so just let the sentries blow them up.
I can't shake the feeling that when they finally release the spear fix, it's just going to be a targeting consistency improvement, which is very welcome, but I'm really hoping they go the extra mile and make this thing the beast it deserves to be. Remove striders and shriekers from the target list and change the poi pickups to replenish 2 missiles. That alone will make the spear feel much better. Also, I don't think the spear should ever miss gunships. Gunships fly through the air extremely slow, even after the movement buff. If the spear missile flies past it should always try to circle back and correct itself.
I hope the super earth engineer who designed the spear missiles/targeting system is being properly reeducated

Somebody requested that I write down some resources for Dzogchen in the sidebar, so I thought I would do a post as well to give a sort of background and offer anyone else the chance to get in on the conversation or building of resources too...
But first,

A Word on Secrecy, Safety Maturity, and Cults

I'm writing this post out by request of someone who messaged me, with the intention of reaching a wider audience, or all beings, who could benefit from learning about these teachings. I have to caution, though, that they may not be for everybody, and in that regard, I would advise gentleness, with yourself and others, with regards to this path. Please take care of yourself, and keep a measure of your own mind with regard to your mental health and these practices. I wish that those who read this post are only those who it may help, and I apologize preemptively to all those it may hurt, or if I've made any mistakes in my writing.
With that in mind, I can maybe share a little bit about the secrecy aspect of what is called Vajrayana. Someone who learns about these practices but does not genuinely practice them can generate obstacles to their own awakening; specifically with Dzogchen, there is a real danger of intellectualizing the practice such that one covers over their own mind with a sheen of thoughts and fabrication, blocking one from advancing towards awakening. In that regard, this particular practice is called self secret. From what I know, many Lamas won't introduce one to the practice if they aren't sure the student has the capability to grasp it, and also - the student won't be able to practice it or understand it if they're not able to.
On the subject of cults - I have to note that Dzogchen practice can be very personal, but that is not a license for any teacher to abuse you, in any form, ever. Things that happened in the past - students getting slapped, hit with shoes, etc. - happened in the past - but that doesn't make them appropriate teachings devices today. A genuinely compassionate teacher won't take advantage of your practice to abuse you, steal your money, degrade you, control you, or anything like that. If they try to - it is more likely that you've stumbled on a cult, and should get away as fast as you can.
As for what makes a good teacher - others have asked this question before, and u/krodha in particular has written out a good description many times, although I can't find the quote he usually uses unfortunately.
As far as general safety in the practice goes, Lama Lena has written this (and I'm shamelessly stealing it from her website):
"The responsibility to take care of your own mind rests with you; not the lama, not your mom, not your cat. So, take it upon yourself to be safe and use common sense."
Please, read that whole page and heed the warnings.

My Practice

I've been working with Dzogchen for about 3.5 years now, since approximately the end of 2020. I'd been interested in Mahayana practices for the better part of a decade before that, but mostly just practicing Samatha by the way of Anapanasati and Metta, and also through the framework provided by *The Mind Illuminated*. I had been curious about Dzogchen for a bit, mostly from reading about it on Wikipedia and just, in general, being interested in seeing what the fuss is surrounding vajrayana, tantra, and the "highest system" called Atiyoga.
By chance, I happened to see a comment on Dzogchen from someone who basically said "If anyone is looking for pointing out, feel free to message me." So I sent them a message giving my general background and motivation for the practice, and they invited me to join them on meditationonline.org - which had been a place they'd been doing meditation for a few years (and still do, I suppose I'd consider myself part of that sangha). I happened to meet the individual who I'd been messaging, a Nyingma lama called Dawai Gocha, and received pointing out, along with teachings for the next few years... up until the present day.
My main practice now is Dzogchen - I gradually transitioned into this from Anapanasati over the course of about six months - and most of my sessions are now just me resting in awareness - Rigpa. I generally do augment this however with other practices, like Satipatthana, mantra recitation, and other practices from the three main vehicles, simply because I like to do them and find them helpful on the path.

What is Dzogchen?

I can't say anything that has not already been said by others, in particular, meditation masters with vastly more experience than I have - but to put it simply, Dzogchen practice can encompass a large number of different types of ancillary practices, and one central practice, which the ancillaries are meant to accomplish. The main practice is resting in the Rigpa.

How to Learn

"Get pointing out instructions from a qualified teacher before embarking on Dzogchen and Mahamudra. A teacher can address pressing questions as they arise and give you a map and tools for the journey. As practitioners, we can rely on those who have hiked the trail before us." - Lama Lena
Since the awareness nature is always present in every being, it is both simple to learn and simple to maintain the practice - being that one just simply is introduced to the awareness nature, and then abides in it at all times.
As far as being introduced to that awareness, in my experience there are many avenues, such as getting pointed out in person( verbally or non verbally), in visions, through texts, in dreams, etc. In one of her videos, Lama Lena goes through, I think, five different days that transmission/pointing out can happen.
But in my experience, getting pointing out, repeatedly and periodically, from a teacher is the most effective (and probably the most important) way to learn, like having someone coach you through riding a bicycle, until you finally internalize the fundamentals and are able ride on your own. Even someone that can check your progress, humble you, and keep you from common pitfalls, can be extremely helpful. Dzogchen, to me and from what I have read from e.g. Tulku Urgyen, is very simple, so simple that many people are able to miss it extremely easily. Whether we miss it because we're so worked up, or because we are subtly fabricating something and fixating on the fabrication - there is a miss, and from what I know, it's better to realize that than carry on doing whatever else. The harsh reality of Dzogchen practice is that fixation, because we're so habituated to it as human beings, is extremely easy, and being led astray by fixation means your meditation becomes a conditioned Samatha practice. On a lighter note though - from my perspective, one we learn to continually distinguish between Consciousness from Wisdom, we are on very solid ground, and it becomes easier and easier to recognize when we've become fixated.
On the subject of teachers - I would consider myself to have had many teachers. My main teacher, I mentioned before, is a lama I talk to live over the internet, but I would also say I've received teachings from recordings, from books, and in dreams. For clarity, I will state again: having a teacher that you can use to verify your practice is very important so as not to fall into common pitfalls. Whether you are confirming your experience through texts, reasoning, pointing out videos, whatever - doing it repeatedly will help because otherwise, as a beginner, one can be lost for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, etc. without finding awareness again. I've seen people on Dzogchen who, unfortunately, even though they got pointing out from great teachers, were not able to full internalize the practice because they got lost in thoughts and then never were able to find recognize awareness again, and so need the pointing out once more. Others get the pointing out repeatedly - practice a lot, and attain good results over time. In that way, from my perspective, having continual access to the teachings is very important.
Fortunately, we live in a good time for this.
I'll get to recommend specifics later but - this is my perspective - although some people say that you can't get transmission over recordings or the internet, or from books - I actually do doubt that that is that case, just from experience. But, I must caution that all of my experience in this realm comes from after the point in time that I received live pointing out, so I would not take what I say as gospel. Once again, anything I say would defer to a knowledge and reputable teacher.
This all being said - regardless of how one feels at a specific time or place, there's no reason to ever refrain from confirming one's experience or view against the words of masters. There are others that have said this, who have more experience, but until we are Buddhas ourselves and phenomena have exhausted, there is no reason to ever stop practicing. Ever. If you are practicing, there is no need to make effort, and all phenomena will come and go without trouble until they are fully exhausted. Namkhai Norbu says almost exactly this in The Cycle of Day and Night.

Finding A Teacher - Resources

"Do not expect to travel this path guided only by books and the internet! Use the internet to find a teacher, then connect with them." - Lama Lena
It's taken a while to get here, my apologies for that.
For finding a teacher, I think any lama that has accomplished a three year retreat will be proficient in either Mahamudra or Dzogchen (both Atiyoga - subtle differenes but the same essential practice), and will likely be able to give pointing out instructions.
Not all may do so at first. Some may want a more personal relationship, some may require Ngondro, and some may say "sorry I don't really give those teachings". Some may require a baseline knowledge of the practice first - for example the Tergar program does.
That being said, there are many places to receive pointing out for free and in public.
Off the top of my head, I can name four that are always open and free: Lama Lena on Facebook and Youtube, The Rangdrol Foundation (run by the reddit user u/jigdrol), MeditationOnline.org, and The Pristine Mind Foundation . I know there are others, but at least to me on reddit and personally, these have been the most visible. I do know that Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and James Low occasionally give pointing out instructions and videos on the practice. As well - many other lama do on occasion, and especially Bon lamas - practitioners and Yogis from the Tibetan Indigenous religion, through teachings series or classes. Some may even do so if you are able to get a phone call with them.
Personally, I recommend finding someone who you can learn from personally, and allowing them to teach you whatever they can.
Edit: Here is a recent list of online teachers compiled by Dzogchen
Lama Lena Dzogchen Youtube Videos
Lama Lena Introductory Videos
Meditation Online Videos (Almost all Dzogchen)
Once you've received pointing out, there are also numerous public books, and texts one can read to deepen their understanding and/or background in the teachings, a few of which I've read and can list below. I'll also try to find some links that I care share too.
Many texts on Dzogchen, Mahyana and Vajrayana in general can be found on the excellent Lotsawahouse.org
A list of a few books that I've read and can personally recommend. Please note - these books (with the exception of Transcending AFAIK) are best read after having received transmission:
The Cycle of Day and Night by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu
Dzogchen: Heart Essence of the Great Perfection by HH The Dalai Lama
Zurchungpa's Testament by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
Vajra Heart Revisited by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
Transcending Ego: Distinguishing Consciousness from Wisdom by Thrangu Rinpoche
Also, I've not read the Trilogy of Rest by Longchenpa but heard that they're excellent.
Anyways, this about wraps up the post. If you have any questions or additional comments, they are very welcome. I wish all of your the very best of luck on your paths, and that all beings may reach enlightenment.

Disclaimer: I am reposting this so more people get a chance to see the post! If you applied to the previous post, no need to apply again! :)
Hello there! This will be a long post but I do encourage you to read all of it so you have an idea what kinda game you are applying for. This would be a long-term campaign, so be willing to commit to the game! Have fun reading!
Game details:
We play using both Discord for voice and video and Foundry VTT for maps and character sheets! Webcams are mandatory since we all have been using them and it helps a lot with roleplaying when you can see the other people! Make sure that your PC or laptop is capable of running Foundry, here is a link to the Foundry system requirements: https://foundryvtt.com/article/requirements/
Do note that you don't need to buy or download anything! How Foundry works is that I send you a link and you'll join through there so no need to worry about that!
We are here to make the story together so while there is a main plot for you to follow, there will be distractions along the way and of course, things that relate to your characters and what they might find interesting!
During session 0 we will go over the initial plot hooks, how your characters might know each other, safety rules, and so on!
The available days are listed in the questionnaire. The start time for the session regardless of the day would be at 9 pm GMT+3 and when a day has been chosen, we would play consistently on that day every week!
RP to combat ratio:
I would say 50-50 since you as players can with your decisions affect how much combat or roleplay there is going to be but I as a GM, am geared more towards weighting narrative but that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be some cool combat set-pieces ;).
There might be moments in the game where we focus more on the social aspect of the game, interacting in character with the world around them and then there might be some more action-oriented sessions where you get to sit at the edge of your seat!
I will say that how I like to run games, I like to focus on characters and what their motives, goals, and flaws are. This would be a more character-driven game so be ready for that and don't be afraid to get into character and have fun while doing so!
How to apply:
All that I require from you is that you read the whole post and then fill out the questionnaire to the best of your ability. I pour a lot of time into making sure that the sessions are good and that everyone is having fun and you can contribute to that by being genuinely interested in the game!
Here is the questionnaire: https://forms.gle/TAnUSBRAoEpKe1Ra8
Basic rules of the campaign:

• Be consistent: I know that emergencies can happen and sometimes life throws a curve ball. Those happen to me too but if it does, I expect you to let me know ASAP when you know that you are not going to be able to join for the session. The general rule in my table is that as long as we have four people playing, we will continue with the game.
• Cinematics: I like to inject some cinematic in the game and I will let you know when there is a cinematic. This happens usually at the end of the session to show you what happens somewhere else where your characters are not necessarily present.
• Campaign may have mature themes: I like to run narrative games and they usually lean towards a more serious tone and while there are moments of lightheartedness, it's not what I am going for this campaign. This is not a campaign for joke characters or happy-go-lucky characters. I will NOT include SA or intense torture roleplaying in my games and there is no tolerance for that. These will be discussed more during the session 0!
• Be attentive during the sessions: During the session, I would like you to feel that you want to be there so I do put a lot of time into prepping the sessions with maps, NPCs, music, etc. So as a player, all I require from you is to know the basic rules, how your character works, and just generally be respectful towards everyone on the table!
• Don't be a dick: Don't rage quit if the dice don't go your way or if you do something in the game that can result in a bad consequence to your character and then it happens. No PvP, unless both agree to it and it needs to have a good reason! Just be respectful and be able to communicate and I am sure we will get along very well!
• There is always a possibility of death: We are here to make an awesome collaborative story together that we can look back to years later with fondness! This however doesn't mean that I am going to pull my punches in combat so that's why I roll in the open. If the dice decide that it's time for your character, then that's how it's going to be. Of course, sometimes there is something that can save you but those are rare. Also, I am not going to go out of my way to kill you and I will make sure that you always know what kinda situations your characters are going to.
• Have a good mic and connection: Having a good mic is important because most of us use headphones so if your audio quality is so bad that it makes our ears bleed then that would be a dealbreaker :D. Bad mics can also negatively just impact the flow of the game if they keep cutting out!

The most important rule is to: HAVE FUN! We are here to play a game and make a story together and everyone's comfort is important to me! If you have doubts or if something feels off, you can always come to talk with me!
Game Rules:

• Write "One Piece is real" in the final questions so I know that you read this far ;)
• Ability scores are determined using point buy with 28 points or a standard array.
• Death saves are rolled in secret
• We are starting from level 2
• Criticals are maxed damage + die rolls
• If you go down, you get a wound up to a maximum of 3 when you get up again. On your third one, if you fall, you die

The reason for Banned spells is that I like to make mysteries and that players need to think. For example, Remove curse would make a situation where you can get cursed not that tense. I like to make curses into plotlines so thus banning the spell gives us that opportunity.
Here are the banned spells:

• Identify
• Detect Thoughts
• Locate object
• Zone of Truth
• Remove curse
• Goodberry
• Silvery Barbs
• Geas
• Legend lore

Banned subclasses:

• Twilight cleric
• Eloquence bard
• Peace cleric

Races from Eberron, PHB, and MPMM are available minus Tortle, Fairy, and Centaur. Also, flying races are not allowed
Here is a little bit of info about me!
My name is Michael, 22 years old. I have been a GM for 3.5 years now! I have enough experience so I won't fumble around but obviously, I don't know everything.
Something about myself is that I have been a huge fan of TTRPGs ever since I started 3.5 years ago. In that period, I have had the pleasure to play multiple systems such as 5e, pathfinder 2e, Call of Cthulhu, cyberpunk RED/2020, mothership, City of Mist, etc. So I have quite a lot of experience and I know the ropes! I also like to draw, write stories, do worldbuilding, play video games, and watch movies and anime.
I am a huge fan of One Piece, it was also an inspiration for this setting so if you are a fan, you'll notice some subtle references here and there!
I do enjoy Eberron as a setting and have read quite a bit on it! Still, while it's an established setting with its lore, that means that there will be things that I might be unaware of or I might change things here and there. I like to stick to the established lore since it's quite expansive and really good but expect changes at some points!
Final words
Thanks for reading this long-ass post and I do hope that you can see that I am putting my all into this! I hope you do too so feel free to fill out the application! Take it slowly and don't rush it since I am using it to gauge how interested you all are to join in! I will keep the post up for a few days and conduct interviews before Sunday. If you have questions, feel free to comment and I'll answer when I have time!
I hope all of you have a nice day/evening and I hope to talk to you later!

Disclaimer: I am reposting this so more people get a chance to see the post! If you applied to the previous post, no need to apply again! :)
Hello there! This will be a long post but I do encourage you to read all of it so you have an idea what kinda game you are applying for. This would be a long-term campaign, so be willing to commit to the game! Have fun reading!
Game details:
We play using both Discord for voice and video and Foundry VTT for maps and character sheets! Webcams are mandatory since we all have been using them and it helps a lot with roleplaying when you can see the other people! Make sure that your PC or laptop is capable of running Foundry, here is a link to the Foundry system requirements: https://foundryvtt.com/article/requirements/
Do note that you don't need to buy or download anything! How Foundry works is that I send you a link and you'll join through there so no need to worry about that!
We are here to make the story together so while there is a main plot for you to follow, there will be distractions along the way and of course, things that relate to your characters and what they might find interesting!
During session 0 we will go over the initial plot hooks, how your characters might know each other, safety rules, and so on!
The available days are listed in the questionnaire. The start time for the session regardless of the day would be at 9 pm GMT+3 and when a day has been chosen, we would play consistently on that day every week!
RP to combat ratio:
I would say 50-50 since you as players can with your decisions affect how much combat or roleplay there is going to be but I as a GM, am geared more towards weighting narrative but that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be some cool combat set-pieces ;).
There might be moments in the game where we focus more on the social aspect of the game, interacting in character with the world around them and then there might be some more action-oriented sessions where you get to sit at the edge of your seat!
I will say that how I like to run games, I like to focus on characters and what their motives, goals, and flaws are. This would be a more character-driven game so be ready for that and don't be afraid to get into character and have fun while doing so!
How to apply:
All that I require from you is that you read the whole post and then fill out the questionnaire to the best of your ability. I pour a lot of time into making sure that the sessions are good and that everyone is having fun and you can contribute to that by being genuinely interested in the game!
Here is the questionnaire: https://forms.gle/TAnUSBRAoEpKe1Ra8
Basic rules of the campaign:

• Be consistent: I know that emergencies can happen and sometimes life throws a curve ball. Those happen to me too but if it does, I expect you to let me know ASAP when you know that you are not going to be able to join for the session. The general rule in my table is that as long as we have four people playing, we will continue with the game.
• Cinematics: I like to inject some cinematic in the game and I will let you know when there is a cinematic. This happens usually at the end of the session to show you what happens somewhere else where your characters are not necessarily present.
• Campaign may have mature themes: I like to run narrative games and they usually lean towards a more serious tone and while there are moments of lightheartedness, it's not what I am going for this campaign. This is not a campaign for joke characters or happy-go-lucky characters. I will NOT include SA or intense torture roleplaying in my games and there is no tolerance for that. These will be discussed more during the session 0!
• Be attentive during the sessions: During the session, I would like you to feel that you want to be there so I do put a lot of time into prepping the sessions with maps, NPCs, music, etc. So as a player, all I require from you is to know the basic rules, how your character works, and just generally be respectful towards everyone on the table!
• Don't be a dick: Don't rage quit if the dice don't go your way or if you do something in the game that can result in a bad consequence to your character and then it happens. No PvP, unless both agree to it and it needs to have a good reason! Just be respectful and be able to communicate and I am sure we will get along very well!
• There is always a possibility of death: We are here to make an awesome collaborative story together that we can look back to years later with fondness! This however doesn't mean that I am going to pull my punches in combat so that's why I roll in the open. If the dice decide that it's time for your character, then that's how it's going to be. Of course, sometimes there is something that can save you but those are rare. Also, I am not going to go out of my way to kill you and I will make sure that you always know what kinda situations your characters are going to.
• Have a good mic and connection: Having a good mic is important because most of us use headphones so if your audio quality is so bad that it makes our ears bleed then that would be a dealbreaker :D. Bad mics can also negatively just impact the flow of the game if they keep cutting out!

The most important rule is to: HAVE FUN! We are here to play a game and make a story together and everyone's comfort is important to me! If you have doubts or if something feels off, you can always come to talk with me!
Game Rules:

• Write "One Piece is real" in the final questions so I know that you read this far ;)
• Ability scores are determined using point buy with 28 points or a standard array.
• Death saves are rolled in secret
• We are starting from level 2
• Criticals are maxed damage + die rolls
• If you go down, you get a wound up to a maximum of 3 when you get up again. On your third one, if you fall, you die

The reason for Banned spells is that I like to make mysteries and that players need to think. For example, Remove curse would make a situation where you can get cursed not that tense. I like to make curses into plotlines so thus banning the spell gives us that opportunity.
Here are the banned spells:

• Identify
• Detect Thoughts
• Locate object
• Zone of Truth
• Remove curse
• Goodberry
• Silvery Barbs
• Geas
• Legend lore

Banned subclasses:

• Twilight cleric
• Eloquence bard
• Peace cleric

Races from Eberron, PHB, and MPMM are available minus Tortle, Fairy, and Centaur. Also, flying races are not allowed
Here is a little bit of info about me!
My name is Michael, 22 years old. I have been a GM for 3.5 years now! I have enough experience so I won't fumble around but obviously, I don't know everything.
Something about myself is that I have been a huge fan of TTRPGs ever since I started 3.5 years ago. In that period, I have had the pleasure to play multiple systems such as 5e, pathfinder 2e, Call of Cthulhu, cyberpunk RED/2020, mothership, City of Mist, etc. So I have quite a lot of experience and I know the ropes! I also like to draw, write stories, do worldbuilding, play video games, and watch movies and anime.
I am a huge fan of One Piece, it was also an inspiration for this setting so if you are a fan, you'll notice some subtle references here and there!
I do enjoy Eberron as a setting and have read quite a bit on it! Still, while it's an established setting with its lore, that means that there will be things that I might be unaware of or I might change things here and there. I like to stick to the established lore since it's quite expansive and really good but expect changes at some points!
Final words
Thanks for reading this long-ass post and I do hope that you can see that I am putting my all into this! I hope you do too so feel free to fill out the application! Take it slowly and don't rush it since I am using it to gauge how interested you all are to join in! I will keep the post up for a few days and conduct interviews before Sunday. If you have questions, feel free to comment and I'll answer when I have time!
I hope all of you have a nice day/evening and I hope to talk to you later!

I saw someone else did something like this recently and thought that I might have something to add to the discussion to help people figure out whether they think this program is right for them, or for people currently in the program to help them plan out classes.
My background is very heavy in statistics and finance (I'm an actuary), so my grounding in calculus, statistics, linear algebra, and business topics was considerably better than most of the other people I interacted with in this program. Conversely, I'm sure my programming skills were probably about average or maybe a little bit below compared to someone with a more targeted background towards those skills.
I started in Fall of 2020 and just finished up this month, Spring 2024. I started out just taking one class a semester and never changed up that plan, would highly recommend doing the same if you're working full time alongside; there's no reason to rush this program. I got a 4.0 GPA overall, although I never really stressed that much about it and definitely did not shy away from "harder" classes in order to bolster GPA. I did this to learn, not to get good grades. The classes I took, in order (my memory of some of the earlier ones might be a bit jumbled as so much time has passed):

1. CSE 6040 - I mentioned how my programming background was weaker relative to my mathematical background. However, reflecting on my experience in this class, it was probably still pretty strong. This class is focused on generalized programming skills, you don't really get into the analytics and modeling that much; it's more of a primer on things like functions, recursion, computer memory management, etc. It's been a few years, but I don't remember struggling with this class at all, and most of the concepts covered (object oriented programming, things like byte encoding, hexadecimal forms, recursion, etc.) were things I was already familiar with in another programming language (this class was in Python) or was relatively easy to pick up. From what I remember, the assignments were auto-graded and you had unlimited attempts, not to mention the fact that most of the prompts were to produce some predetermined result... and, as long as you were able to verify that your code produced that result, you got full points. I didn't miss a single point in this entire class. I believe there were "final exams" which were really just timed window coding assignments much like the homework, and you could do the assignments at any point during a 4-day window or something like that.
2. ISYE 6501 - This class was R-based and focused on basic analytics models. The material was much more applied than 6040. Similarly, the material was not difficult, and I was familiar with a lot of the basic models already (such as GLMs) from having worked with them in my job. The grading was done on a peer-grading framework; based on who anonymously is assigned your homework to grade, you can get someone who's a stickler for every point on the guide, or people who are a bit more lenient. I never really worried much about how things were graded in this class; yeah, I did miss some points arbitrarily, but nothing that made that much of a difference. If you generally put in the work and understand the material, your peers will recognize that. I found this a bit more interesting than 6040 because, rather than a deterministic "right answer", there was some more creativity implied here to solve each problem. There was a final project for this class where you walked through a hypothetical analytics problem and explained how you would go about solving it. I found this an interesting thought exercise and enjoyed this class. The pacing felt a little fast, as you basically had an assignment due each week, but the assignments were small. Like 6040 I found this class to be quite easy but I didn't 100% it due to the peer grading thing.
3. MGT 8803 - I almost applied to be exempt from this class, as my background intersects a lot with the material. The accounting and finance modules for this class literally did not teach me anything new. Supply chain was new for me and I found it interesting. I'm trying to remember what the other module was. I think it was marketing? I didn't like it. Overall I found this class quite easy for the aforementioned reasons, however I've heard from a lot of the other folks without business backgrounds that this class was pretty tough so take my opinions with a grain of salt. Taking this in the summer cut out one of the modules, normally there are 5 but in Summer there are 4. I figured this made sense to take during the truncated semester because I was unlikely to cover that much new material, and it turns out I was right about that. Each module lasted 2 weeks (I think in a normal semester it lasts 3) and has a timed multiple-choice test at the end. A lot of people didn't like this format compared to ISYE 6501 and CSE 6040; I'm not really sure how else this material could've been covered. This class was OK, the material is not really that deep but it's a pretty good primer on a large number of business topics.
4. ISYE 6740 - The first class I took that was actually pretty challenging, which makes sense considering the first 3 courses were just the basic core. This is pretty much an intro to machine learning as a discipline, and the first time I remember digging into academic papers that discuss some machine learning topic and attempting to recreate the results (this is something we did a lot in the more advanced classes going forward and incidentally now that I have graduated is probably one of the best ways to go about learning a new topic). I remember this class as having a format similar to ISYE 6501/CSE6040 in that you had large programming assignments to do, as well as open-book "exams" which were really just timed programming assignments. Assignments are not auto-graded; TA's review each one and thus the assignments have much more of a focus on explaining your findings than producing the exact expected output (unlike 6040). Some of the theory questions have you applying complicated matrix algebra rules that I'm not surprised a lot of people struggled with. The TA responsiveness in this class was pretty good from what I remember, but your mileage may vary. I remember getting 3 weeks to do each assignment but I also remember not thinking that was a lot of time, these assignments are very extensive, have many parts, and take a long time to get through. Like with 6040 I ended up not missing a single point in this class but I did find it difficult and spent significantly more time working on it than in prior classes, probably 10-15 hrs a week, give or take.
5. ISYE 6644 - I was familiar with maybe 50% of the material we covered due to my extensive statistics background, however I was not aware of the exact mechanics of random number generation or the concept of a batched mean, for example. I remember this class having several "check your understanding" quizzes that focused on the mathematical foundations. Didn't struggle with this much in terms of difficulty and found the material very useful. Setting up custom simulation environments is very useful and arena is pretty cool even if it's unlikely you'll ever use it. Some assignments feature similar tools in Python (simpy). There might have been some coverage of R in this as well, or at least the accommodation for people that wanted to use it. There was a project for this class, but you didn't have to come up with the topic on your own, you could pick from a list, and you could do your project on your own if you wanted (which, given the option, was always the choice I made, due to the inherent randomness in picking the right members of a group). However you can do a group project if you want.
6. MGT 6203 - The first of the classes I took that required a group project. I recommend you are proactive in putting together groups in situations like these, posting threads on Ed/whatever the forum is as soon as the class begins. My group was alright; not everyone in it was great, but we had enough going overall to make up for the weaker group members. The project has some arbitrary guidelines from what I remember - you need to put together a midterm report and video presentation that is no more than ~2 minutes long or something like that (if it's 2:01 you get penalized) and the final report is 5 minutes or less, and everyone in the group needs to speak. I honestly don't remember much else about this class, it was pretty forgettable, but not horrible. Not overall that difficult, another business class so a lot of topics I was already familiar with, but there was more new here than in 8803.
7. CSE 6242 - Another class with a group project. Again, I was proactive, and again, overall, my group was... okay. Some people who were really good, some who were... not. This class is characterized by a lot of assignments that are autograded, like 6040, but the assignments are a bit more difficult. Overall not that difficult with the exception of the D3 assignment, but that's more due to the fact that I'm not really sure how the autograder works for that; it tries to determine based on some internal structure of your html code whether or not you're fulfilling the requirements. I got a perfect score on all of the assignments, and they give you the chance to score over 100% on I believe either assignment 1 or assignment 2. A lot of people bombed the D3 assignment (I think it's assignment 2) but still did well in the class because it's not that hard to do well on everything else, so keep that in mind. This class does a great job of exposing you to a lot of new technologies, but there isn't that much depth to it. That's not really the point of this kind of class though, it equips you with the tools to explore things deeper if you so choose.
8. ISYE 8803 - I was a big fan of this class. It's taught in MATLAB but you can use Python if you so choose, you'll see in reviews of this class that you should really just use MATLAB since a lot of the sample code etc. is not in other languages, so that's what I did. However, they must've recently added Python and R code for sample solutions, so feel free to use what you want. MATLAB was interesting, there were parts of one assignment I also used R for (grouped lasso in R is a lot more straightforward). This class is all about high dimensional data and representing it in a more simplified and comprehensive way, think about something like sonar which might have datapoints separated by milliseconds and thus a very dense representation of a signal captured over a short period of time. After ISYE 6740, I found this to be the class that taught me the most up to this point.
9. CS 7642 - Taking this class in summer is kind of rough. There's 6 homework assignments that are autograded, similar format to CSE 6040. There are 3 projects which are much larger programming assignments for which you'll write papers explaining methodology, results, etc. These projects take a while, particularly project 3. I did well on projects 1 and 2 and decently on 3, although I spent the most time on 3 by far; it involves reinforcement learning to simulate a soccer environment and train agents how to play against an AI developed externally. The AI baselines are hard to beat, and I didn't manage to beat them, but I wrote a decent paper explaining what I did. The final exam for this class should be dropped as it doesn't add value to the class, people regularly score extremely low on it, the average score in the class was something like a 45%. I scored a bit lower than average but still got an A in the class because it was heavily curved. Reinforcement learning is a very interesting topic, though, and I would highly recommend this class as a primer on the material. It's probably a good idea not to take it in the summer, though.
10. CS 7643 - This class was pretty difficult but I still think 6740 was tougher. The material is extremely dense. There are parts of programming assignments that are autograded, but also short answer portions that are reviewed by TAs. Grading on those were pretty subjective. This is the only class I can remember really needing to discuss things with TAs to understand what was being asked a little better. Unfortunately, the TAs in the semester I took this weren't the best. They seemed more concerned with unintentionally giving away a bit too much information in any of their responses. I can understand this, but it came off as intentionally opaque most of the time. There was a group project for this course as well, and my group was excellent, probably the best experience I had with a group in this program. I can imagine how much this course would've sucked if I would've had a mediocre/bad group. Based on discussions with my group, some of the grading seemed highly arbitrary, with some TAs grading similar responses to the same question differently. Like I said above, though, I never really worried about this. I never once in this program ever disputed a grade, and I continued with that in this class as well.
11. CSE 6748 - Practicum and final class. For this class you get to choose between a number of pre-determined Georgia Tech sponsors, or form your own project for your own employesome external entity. It was a lot more work to do this, so I just went with one of the pre-determined GTech ones. I really enjoyed this one, I had constant communication with the sponsor as I developed my project and came up with something that I was quite proud of. I wanted to explore a natural language processing task, so I picked a project that I thought would allow me to do this, and was very satisfied with the result. There's a number of videos you have to watch that explain some overarching aspect of analytics that were pretty interesting as well, you can watch all of these in a single day and then focus on the project if you like. It's possible to finish the entire semester's work in just a few weeks, I was able to do the entire project and write the final paper in about a month's time, at which point I coordinated with the sponsor to tailor the work I did to a format that they would be able to implement for their business problem if they wanted to.

I can't comment on the job placement prospects of this program, as I just finished it and was actively employed the entire time I was in it. As an actuary there's not much this program does that my exam certification process didn't in terms of career prospects. However, it did position me much better within the context of the expanding role of data and analytics in insurance going forward, and also opens me up to similarly mathematical roles with a firmer grounding in big data and also some business elements (quantitative finance/data science roles). There were also things I learned in this program that I was able to apply directly to my day-to-day work. If you're considering this program, I would recommend you think about a few things:

1. I'm pretty shocked at how many people I saw during my program who didn't really think that much about why they're doing this. I get that the barrier to entry is low, but it's a serious commitment if you're actually trying to graduate. Most of the people who start this program don't finish, so consider whether you're ready to spend almost 4 years going to school part-time, or if you're able to double up on classes for some of the semesters. Most of the people I know in the program doubled up at least once, I never did but I was never in a hurry. If you must double up, don't make it your first semester. Dip your toe in the water, see how it is, and then reassess. But, above all else, think about why you want to do this, and use that as your guiding goal to bring you through to the end.
2. Something I tended to see pretty much without fail in most of my classes - a lot of the graduate students in this program spend way too much time worrying about minute, particular details that don't really matter. Maybe it was just my philosophy that I would probably never dispute a grade, or that I was never really that concerned with getting a perfect GPA, etc. but I was always marveling at what I saw asked in Ed posts. People would ask whether they could use a certain programming language for an assignment, what packages they were allowed to use, would post screenshots of bugs and ask for TA's to help walk them through it, etc. Generally, without fail, the TAs would respond along the lines of: use whatever programming language you want, as long as you can display your output/submit it in a way that we can verify by running ourselves, we'll make the effort; use the debugger to step through your code to find the problem; etc. Generally, in most cases, the assignments and questions are designed in a way to teach you something, to get you to realize/understand some pattern or data concept that has some underlying logic that makes sense. For example, the idea of saliency maps on image processing takes the 3-channel RGB color pixel shading representation of an image and condenses it into a single channel, and, as a result of that, loses some resolution in suggesting parts of the image driving a model result that might be different depending on the channel; i.e., an image with a very heavily blue-shaded part that detracts from a certain result, but with a red-shaded part somewhere else that increases the probability of the modeled result. This was part of a conceptual question on how saliency maps differed from other pixel influence attribution methods in Deep Learning, and is part of what you should logically understand since it reduces the channels of the image representation from 3 (R, G, B) to 1 (usually grayscale). I think people tend to run to the TA the second they have difficulty with something and don't stop for a second to think it through, one exercise I might recommend is to consider: if you ran into this problem out in the world and you didn't have a TA/managesome other authority figure to explain the answer to you, what do you think it might be? Does the answer even matter? If it still matters and you have no idea how to solve it, maybe then you can go to the TA.
3. In every single group project I worked on, we had an initial planning session where we determined the scope of what we wanted to do. For most of the projects, this was an essential deliverable in addition to the final paper. However, in almost every case, someone in the group was always playing some game of runaway scope where they kept on wanting to add methods/questions to exploration beyond what was initially planned in ways that I intuitively knew would be impossible to manage in just one semester. I often had to say something along the lines of "if we have time we'll do that" or "when we write up our paper, we can put that in the avenues for future exploration section" or something similar. It turns out that we never had time to look into these things, and our initial scope was usually well-defined considering the time we had. I'm not sure why this was always so front-and-center in my focus, maybe since I used to work in consulting and project budgeting/scoping is so unbelievably important in that context. Whatever the case may be, understand that you won't be able to change the world every time you do a project. Make some incremental improvement, reflect on the results, and then include some notes in a "potential avenues for future exploration" section. I was pretty surprised at how many people had so much trouble putting the pencils down at the end. I can practically guarantee that, for the classes where I did a project on my own, I probably did substantially less work than other individual groups for precisely this reason. In general, you probably don't have to do as much work as you think you do.

So, would I recommend the program overall? Absolutely. It's not perfect, I found some of the formats annoying - CS 7642 has no business having that final exam, it adds nothing to the class at all, is arbitrarily extremely difficult and the class is good enough and complete enough with the removal of that exam that its inclusion to me appears to be the result of some arbitrary quota somewhere. I also don't really like the group project format and profoundly disagree with the reasoning that GTech and most other academic institutions give as to why group projects are even good or necessary, however I do acknowledge that from a logistics and resource standpoint it's unmanageable to grade individual projects for every single person in a given class and group projects do decrease the number of papers that TAs will have to read. Considering the scale of what GTech has managed to do, and how many students enroll each year, I'm surprised the program is as well-managed as it is. Yes, it does require a lot of self-teaching, but in most cases you can actively engage with TAs multiple times a week if you're struggling with topics and from what I've seen they were very responsive.
Anyways just wanted to give my perspective as someone who just finished this program and still thinks it's worthwhile despite its flaws.

This song has become a well loved track for me. DYWTYLM is a track that sounds the most poppie compared to the rest of their catalog. One of the reasons that I love this song is because it really gives that main character euphoria. I live in a major US City and rely on public transit. That means I walk A LOT. The walk-ability of this song is top tier. The way the beat goes is always right in time with my foot meeting the pavement as I walk through the big city. Aside from the feel of the song the lyrics, as per usual, are a treat to dissect.
Within the Lore of Sleep Token I choose rest my head on an acquired understanding that Sleep is just a personification of Mental/Emotional states of being/the Self and Death. Thus is the framework of which I consume this musical offerings. The songs structure (from out understanding) as encounters with Vessel and Sleep, making the lyrics very conversational even if only one sided at times. In this song ,however, it seems almost more to be breaking that third wall in addition to its tie to the sleep lore. The more I listen to this track the more I feel like I am getting a little peak into a more pointed aspect of the mental continuum of the man behind the mask; a insecurity perhaps? Behold my theory fellow worshipers...

1. Energy is shared and never ending. Everything that makes up the stars in the sky also makes up us. Many spiritualists adopt the understanding that we are simply the universe experiencing itself over and over in different incarnations. We are each other. I am it and it is me, a philosophy I think it is safe to say that Sleep Token shares. In 2017 the band even released a single line response on social media in res posting to an article that within its headline asked (possibly paraphrasing) "What and Who the Hell are Sleep Token?" To which the band responded "We are YOU" All this to say that any relationship or battle or communication with sleep is, to me, often just directed towards the darker facets of the artist himself. Additionally it is about creating a community that can dine in darkness together.
2. So why would I suspect that a fourth wall is broken? The perspective that I am viewing this song in lends itself to that suspension though the song still works regardless of POV. Either this song is reference towards a specific person or conversation or its directed at fans or both. DYWTYLM has come off of the most recent album Take Me Back To Eden. At this point the band has gained some following though it seems it didn't really explode until around the time of the albums release when the summoning blew up on social media. Regardless, when you have the talent that Sleep Token has, a large fan base is inevitable. I can imagine going from being relatively unknown to having strangers shout that they love you can be a heavy experience especially if one already struggles with self Image. To me, this song comes from the headspace of someone being interested in you in some way and wanting to build some sort of relationship with you, wanting to invest themselves in you. Despite this person saying how much they want you in their life, you feel like you should come with a warning label. I feel that's whats happening here. the question DYWTYLM is a interesting one because the inflection of that question is what can easily change the perspective. I view that question with a tone of disbelief and sense of "..but why?"

"Do you roll with the waves? or do you duck into deep blue safety? Is is always the same? DYWTYLM? Do you pull out the chains? or Do you push into constant aching each and every day? DYWTYLM?"
To me its as if someone has told him that they love him and that they want him to have a bigger role in their life in whatever regards the relationship is to. Friend, Lover whomever. He is trying to deter this person from getting to close. essentially it is say "My responses to negative stimulus is either on one side of the spectrum or the complete other side of the spectrum." Perhaps he is saying "I may be a bueden to you." As if to warn "I am too broken for you." If you look at the entirety of this song like this, you can see it easily. All of the questions seem posed as if/then, this or that. When he says DYWTYLM, is he really saying"You may wish that you loved me but behold, here is all the lists of the reasons we wont work out cause I am too complicated and mentaly ill. So, after all that, do you still want me? Do You Wish That You Loved me?"
Another reason I suspect that this song could be directed at fans is because of the in between parts toward the end of the song. During a interview style version of one of vessels messages he had said (again, paraphrasing)"I only see them smiling...I want them to smile" and during the end of the song you hear him sing "smile back.....at me..."
The band has always wanted it to be about the music. These are smart lads though, I am sure they expected and bit of a following from ....Hungry Eyes...if you will.... Perhaps this song gently address "hey, you think im desirable? If you really knew me..if you knew the man behind the mask..,maybe you would change your mind."
During the course of the song he also addresses "my reflecion wont smile back at me like I know it should and I would turn into a stranger in a minute if I could. There is something eating me alive I dont know what it is...."
He doesnt seem to like himself very much in the first place. Introspectively, The artist understands that sometimes there is a blind spot to see greatness within ones self. When he says he wished he could be a stranger it could be that he wishes he were able to look at himself more objectivly and not be weighed down by any preconceived notions or lies he has told himself. To say he doesn't know what is eating him alive it sounds like he is struggling with depression or some other mental/emotional health concern.
He goes on to say "I cannot hope to give you what I cannot give myself" This is powerful because its like he has been offered a way out of his lonleyness, out of some of the darkness but has refused it because he wont do it at the expense of anyone else. He is compassionate.
In summary I feel that the track DYWTYLM is about questioning what someone sees in you, and/or wanting to protect somone from yourself. I get a sense that this narrative is something that is perhaps a less metaphorical aspect and more a confession of something real that the lead singer has dealth with before.
So what do you think? Have you had similar thoughts? How do you feel it relates to the Sleep lore? There are probably as many variations of interpretation as there are Sleep Token Worshipers. Aside from whatever is truley cannon in Vessles mind, there is no right or wrong answers or interpretations. If something resonated with you then you explore that path and if it didnt thats okay too.
-Byte

At the world’s top college of magic and technology, every day brings a new discovery -and a new disaster. The advanced experiments of the college students tend to be both ambitious and apocalyptic, with the end of the world only prevented by a mysterious time loop, and a small handful of students who retain their memories.
Surviving the loops was hard enough, but now, in his senior year, Vell Harlan must take charge of them, and deal with the fact that the whole world now knows his secrets. Everyone knows about Vell’s death and resurrection, along with the divine game he is a part of. Now Vell must contend with overly curious scientists and evil billionaires hungry for divine power while the daily doomsday cycle bombards him with terrorists, talking elephants, and the Grim Reaper himself -but if he can endure it all, the Last Goddess’s game promises the ultimate prize: power over life itself.
[Previous Chapter][Patreon][Cover Art]
“Should I be worried?”
Why would you be worried?” Kim said. “Dean Lichman loves us.”
Dean Lichman had asked the two of them to stop by his office, though his brief message had not said what for. That left Vell to concoct nightmare scenarios in his head.
“He doesn’t love all of us.”
“Alex doesn’t count as ‘us’,” Kim said. She was a looper in purely a technical sense, mostly due to her own refusal to be a team player. “Besides, she’s been behaving lately. She’s only been an asshole, not an active liability.”
“That we know of.”
“If we don’t know about it, Dean probably doesn’t either,” Kim said. “It’s fine, Vell, he probably just wants to ask us for advice or deal with some problem he has.”
“That’s not much better,” Vell said. “How weird would things have to be that the Dean is asking us for help personally?”
“Only one way to find out,” Kim said. She gestured to the door to the Dean’s office.
Kim entered first, and found it in much the same state as it always was. The desk piled high with paperwork, a small bowl of assorted candies shoved into the corner of the desk, and Dean Lichman behind it, frantically tapping away on a laptop. Vell had not been in this office for several years, and it was vastly different than the last time he’d been here.
“Ah, there you are, come in, have a seat,” Dean Lichman said. “Unless you’d rather we have our conversation elsewhere, Vell.”
“Why would I want that?”
“Well, it’s my understanding you haven’t been in this office since my, uh, predecessor,” Dean Lichman said.
“Oh, right, the kidnapping,” Vell said. “No, I’m good, I don’t really get traumatized by things anymore.”
Vell had been killed too many different ways in too many different places to have a functional trauma response. A few days ago he’d gotten his legs chewed off by a vending machine, and still stopped by it to pick up a soda on his way to the office.
“That’s a very concerning response, Mr. Harlan.”
“Yeah. Anyway, what did you need?”
Dean Lichman gestured for the duo to take a seat, and both did so. He folded desiccated hands in front of himself before beginning to speak.
“I would like to ask you two to take a look at an experiment that will be occurring later this week,” Dean Lichman said. “I don’t have any reason to believe it poses a threat, but I would like to be assured it is a safe and ethical environment, and, well, you two have a knack for identifying trouble spots.”
“You could say that,” Kim said. It was more accurate to say that trouble had a way of identifying them -and then leaping at them and ripping their heads off.
“I’d appreciate it if the two of you could simply examine the laboratory and give it your approval, or disapproval, as the case may be,” Dean Lichman said. “Though if you’re too busy, I fully understand.”
“If you don’t think this is dangerous, why are you asking for our help anyway?”
“Simply for my own peace of mind, frankly,” Dean Lichman said. “The school’s policies on animal experimentation are...satisfactory, I suppose, but I do want to take extra precautions when the subject is a creature as smart as an elephant.”
“An elephant?”
“Yes, a resident of a reserve in Thailand,” Dean Lichman said. “An older elephant by the name of Mae Noi. She has cancer, apparently, and she is submitting to experimental treatment in the hopes it will be useful for younger elephants.”
Kim’s digital face briefly flashed with a facial expression of concerned skepticism.
“‘She’ is submitting to treatment? As in the elephant?”
“Yes. Apparently the elephant can talk,” Dean Lichman said. “No, I don’t know how it works, they said it was ‘more impressive in person’.”
“Well now I kind of want to go just to see the talking elephant,” Vell said.
“Same.”
“Well, do try to take a few glances at the experiment’s safety while you’re there,” Dean Lichman said.
“Sounds like a plan,” Vell said. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“I’ll be there too,” Kim said.
“Excellent. Thank you both, and I’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” the Dean said. He then bid them both a polite goodbye and returned to his mountains of paperwork. Vell took a step out of the office and then took a sip from the soda he’d recently retrieved from the evil vending machine.
“So, what do you think?”
“I think I really do want to see the talking elephant,” Kim said.
“Obviously, yeah, we all want to see the talking elephant,” Vell said. “I mean the whole situation. You think the elephant thing is going to be the daily apocalypse for that day?”
“Well, on the one hand, an elephant seems like the kind of thing that would kill us,” Kim said. “But on the other, I feel like the fact we have advance warning means it’s not going to happen.”
“True. The universe probably wouldn’t make it that easy for us.”
“Yeah, but the elephant thing still feels pretty threatening,” Kim said. “Only way to find out is to wait a few days, I guess.”
A FEW DAYS LATER
“Hello you two,” Dean Lichman said. “And Hawke.”
“Hey,” Hawke said.
“He also wanted to see the talking elephant,” Kim explained.
“Well, that’s not a problem, it was an open invitation,” Dean Lichman said.
“Thanks. Still, sorry for not saying I was going to show up in advance,” Hawke said. “It took me a long time to make up my mind whether I was more interested in or afraid of a talking elephant.”
“They are rather large, aren’t they? I suppose that could be intimidating.”
“I’m okay with elephants on their own, it’s the talking part that doesn’t sit right with me,” Hawke said. “What if the elephant doesn’t like me? What if I’m the first person to ever get insulted by an elephant?”
“You’re less afraid of getting trampled by an elephant than insulted by one?”
“I’m a little afraid of trampling, but elephants are chill,” Hawke explained. “They wouldn’t attack unless provoked. I kind of feel like one might call me a dipshit unprovoked, though.”
“You have oddly specifics fears, Mr. Hughes,” Dean Lichman said.
“Yeah.”
In spite of those fears, Hawke happily stepped through the door to the zoology lab. It did not take a long time to locate the elephant in the room, as it was a literal elephant. The towering pachyderm was in a makeshift pen in the center of the lab, with an ample supply of food and a strange pedestal in front of her.
“Dr. Chanthara,” Dean Lichman said, with a polite wave to one of the researchers in the room. “Good to see you. These are the students I told you about.”
“Hm. Nice to meet you,” Dr. Chanthara said. He was, perhaps not unreasonably, skeptical of why three seemingly random students were in charge of a safety inspection. The fact that one of the three was a robot made him even more skeptical.
“Hi, nice to meet you too, and, uh, don’t mind us,” Vell said. “We just have an eye for weird things other people might miss.”
“Sure. I- wait. Aren’t you that kid who got chosen by a god?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Vell said. “And her too, technically.”
Kim shrugged. She didn’t care for any extra attention on that point.
“Right,” Chanthara said. He was beginning to see why these students might know their stuff. “I suppose we should start by introducing you to Mae Noi. Say hello, Mae.”
The elephant shifted on her feet and poked her trunk at the wide pedestal in front of her twice.
“Hello. Friends,” a synthesized voice droned. Vell stepped a little closer to the pedestal, just enough to see that there were an array of buttons on the side facing Mae Noi.
“Oh, it’s kind of like a keyboard,” Vell said. He’d seen similar things used with dogs, though usually in a much simpler fashion. Mae Noi seemed to have a few dozen buttons at her disposal.
“Smart,” Mae Noi said, with another prod of her trunk.
“We initially put it into our sanctuary as a bit of a novelty, something elephants could choose to interact with,” Dr. Chanthara explained. “Mae Noi took to it a bit better than most. Especially once she found out she could use it to ask for food.”
“Food. Pumpkin. Pumpkin. Pumpkin.”
“No, Mae, no food until after experiment,” Dr. Chanthara scolded.
“Experiment,” Mae Niko said with a prod. “Pumpkin.”
“Yes, experiment then pumpkin,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“That’s not really a talking elephant, is it?” Hawke said.
“It’s more talking than most elephants,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“Elephant. Smart,” Mae Niko said. “Smart.”
“Yes, uh, right, elephant smart,” Hawke said. He took a step back, to avoid any further offense and any further risk of being insulted by Mae Noi.
“You’re very impressive, Mae, don’t mind him,” Kim said. “How many words does she know?”
“Our platform back home has around three hundred words, though she’s still learning some of them,” Dr. Chanthara said. “The ‘travel’ version we put together only has a hundred, just enough to make sure she can get her basic needs met and communicate about the experiment.”
“Right, speaking of, I do believe we should put some time into our reason for being here,” Dean Lichman interjected. “You’re welcome to stick around afterwards, at Dr. Chanthara and Mae Noi’s discretion, of course, but we should get underway.”
“We probably should get to business, yeah,” Kim said. She tapped the side of her metal head. “I’m going to scan the lab. Vell, you talk to the elephant and make sure everything’s above-board.”
“Abov- oh, right,” Vell said. “Sorry, not exactly used to being able to ask animals if they agree to animal experimentation.”
“Experiment,” Mae said.
“Yeah, experiment,” Vell said, as he turned to Mae. “So, Mae Noi, this experiment might hurt, do you know that?”
“Experiment. Hurt. Elephant,” Mae Noi prodded. “Experiment. Help. Elephant. Help. Baby.”
“Help baby?”
“Baby. Baby. Elephant. Sick. Baby. Sick.”
“We’ve explained the nature of her condition to Mae Noi as best we can,” Dr. Chanthara said. “She has several children, and is concerned they might be similarly affected.”
“Help. Baby,” Mae Noi said. “Experiment. Help.”
The way Mae Noi frantically tapped the buttons tugged at Vell’s heartstrings, but he choked those emotions down.
“So you want to do this experiment to help baby, got it,” Vell said. “Even if it hurts you?”
“Elephant. Old,” Mae Noi said. “Hurt. Okay. Help. Baby.”
“Huh. Well, that does sound like informed consent to me,” Vell said. “Passes ethical muster, at least.”
The campus rules allowed students to be experimented on, with their consent, so Vell saw no reason not to apply the same standard to an elephant.
“You speak up if you change your mind about the experiment, okay?”
“Stop. Stop. Stop,” Mae said, mashing the same button a few times. “Yes.”
“You got it. I’m going to go help my friends check things out,” Vell said. “Good talking to you, Mae.”
“Good. Talk. Friend,” Mae said. She waved goodbye with her trunk, and Vell waved back. He wandered away from Mae Noi’s pedestal and found Kim and Hawke carefully examining rows of beakers and various other supplies.
“Nothing sus yet, boss,” Hawke said.
“Nothing caustic, mutagenic, or explosive?”
“Well, something mutagenic, but it’s supposed to be,” Kim said. She had scanners built into her body much like those that had once been in Vell’s glasses, allowing her to analyze the complex chemical formulas at a glance. “They’re going for some gene editing similar to what we’ve tried to do on human cancer patients. Low success rate, but not harmful. Some adaptations to work on elephants, of course.”
“Run it by any of our chemistry and biology student friends yet?”
“A few,” Kim said. “Haven’t gotten anything back yet, though.”
“Maybe run it by Skye, too,” Vell said. “She’d recognize anything that’d mutate an animal.”
“She does love to mutate things,” Kim said.
“Benevolently,” Vell insisted. “Just show her. I’m going to check for any stray equipment.”
The presence of an unusually large test subject had resulted in the lab being rearranged and reshuffled, so Vell did a quick scan for any misplaced equipment that might pose a threat. He found, to his surprise, a tidy and well-organized environment, with any and all extraneous materials securely locked away. There wasn’t so much as a shrink ray out of place. Vell did another loop just to be sure, but returned to his friends empty-handed.
“This place has less safety hazards than my lab,” Vell said. Hawke stared at him for a while.
“Why does your lab have safety hazards?’
“I do runecarving, there’s like, hammers and chisels,” Vell said. “Those can hurt people.”
“Mm, true,” Hawke said. “So you really didn’t find anything?”
“Nothing,” Vell said. “This place is secure as I’ve ever seen a lab be.”
“It’s like I said,” Kim began. “We got an actual warning about it, so obviously nothing’s going to go wrong. That’d be too easy.”
“Maybe,” Vell said. “Things can get teleported in, or someone could cast a spell, or something.”
“Yeah, but that applies to anywhere, at any time,” Kim said.
“Kim’s right,” Hawke said. “I say we go business as usual.”
“I guess,” Vell said. “We have to branch out a little, at least. Can’t keep an eye on one room all day.”
The trio stopped sulking around the outskirts of the lab and returned to Dean Lichman and Dr. Chanthara.
“Everything looks good,” Kim said. “Probably the safest lab I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” Dr. Chanthara said.
“We have very high safety standards here at the Einstein-Odinson,” Dean Lichman said, defensively. “Relatively speaking. Innovation requires some risk.”
“I understand perfectly. So does Mae.”
“Hurt. Okay,” Mae said.
“Not that okay,” Vell said. “Nice meeting you, Dr. Chanthara. You too, Mae.”
“Wait.”
Mae prodded one of the buttons on her pedestal and then pointed her trunk at the three of them. Hawke looked deeply concerned, but stepped forward alongside Vell and Kim. Mae Noi appraised them with massive brown eyes, and then moved her trunk back towards the pedestal. Vell noticed a distinctive scar on the bridge of her long nose just as Mae Noi pressed another button.
“Joke.”
“...Joke?”
Dr. Chanthara sighed and rolled his eyes.
“Just go along with it,” he said. “She likes to tell her joke.”
“Uh, okay,” Vell said. “Let’s hear it.”
“What. Elephant. Favorite. Part. Tree.”
“Umm...I don’t know, Mae,” Vell lied. He’d heard this joke from a kid, once. “What part?”
“Trunk,” Mae said. She gave a loud bray of amusement and then slammed her trunk down a few more times to emphasize the punchline. “Trunk. Trunk.”
“Oh, ha, I get it,” Kim said, hoping her feigned laugh was convincing. She’d never tried to lie to an elephant before. “Good one, Mae.”
Mae Noi shifted from side to side, looking pleased with herself, while the trio took a step back and stopped their feigned laughter.
“Did you give her buttons just to tell that joke with?”
“She gets upset,” Dr. Chanthara said. “I’m not even sure she understands the pun, she just likes people’s reactions.”
“As long as she’s having fun,” Hawke said.
“We’ll get out of your hair now,” Vell said. “Good luck with the experiment, feel free to let us know if you need a hand with anything.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Dr. Chanthara said. Some of his earlier skepticism seemed to have softened, but he did not seem entirely onboard with three strangers mucking about with his experiment. Vell and his friends left before they stretched what little goodwill they had any further. Mae Noi waved her trunk goodbye as the three left the lab and stepped back onto the quad.
“I’m going to try and sneak some classes in,” Hawke said. “Later.”
“I’ll check some of our usual hot spots,” Kim said, before she too left. Once again alone, Vell headed to one of his own classes, and called up Samson.
“Hey, Samson,” Vell began. “See anything interesting while we were playing with the elephant?”
“Well, I thought I clocked someone acting suspicious, but it turns out he was only sneaking around to go see his boyfriend,” Samson said. “Nothing apocalyptic, but I did get called a homophobe, which is pretty emotionally devastating.”
“I’m sure you’ll recover someday,” Vell said. “Keep an eye out. Usually the safer things look, the more dangerous things end up being.”
“Will do,” Samson said, before saying goodbye and hanging up.
***
Vell got increasingly nervous the longer the day went without its daily disaster. He thought about checking in on Mae Noi again, but then recalled Kim’s warning about it being too obvious, but then remembered that nobody had seen anything suspicious anywhere else, but then remember that Mae Noi’s lab had looked perfectly safe-
“Vell.”
“Huh?”
“You’re spiraling,” Kim said.
“I’m not spiraling, I’m just,” Vell said, with a pause for contemplation. “Considering multiple options.”
“In a spiral fashion,” Kim said. “Eat the damn french fries. Honestly, what’s the point of ordering so many if you’re just going to let them get cold?”
“It’s not like they’re going to go to waste,” Vell said. The same time loop that allowed him to eat massive amounts of french fries without fear of gaining weight also allowed him to avoid food waste. One of the upsides of life in a time loop.
“Just eat, Vell,” Kim said. “You worry too much about all this shit.”
“I’m in charge, it’s my job to worry about it,” Vell said.
“It’s your job to handle it,” Kim said. “There’s no point thinking about this shit before it happens, you spend all day thinking about an elephant and then the universe drops, like, a bat with tentacles on your head. Just deal with as it comes, Vell.”
Vell leaned on the table and managed to chomp down on a french fry or two.
“You know, next year, when I’m not running the show anymore, I’m going to call and see if you still think it’s that easy.”
“I sure hope so,” Kim said. “I’m saying all this shit trying to make myself believe it too.”
“Oh good, you’re lying to both of us,” Vell said. “That’s cool.”
“Fake it ‘til you make it, Vell, that’s how it goes,” Kim said. “Eat your damn french fries.”
Vell rolled his eyes and returned to his fries, which were now starting to cool. Thankfully he would not have to worry about finishing them. A loud crash from across campus interrupted him mid-bite and nearly made Vell choke on his fries. He painfully swallowed the half-chewed food and then looked over his shoulder.
“Son of a bitch, finally,” Vell said. A few years ago he’d found it weird whenever he was relieved about a disaster, but now he was just genuinely glad to get it over with. The waiting was as killer as the apocalypse. He tossed his fries in the trash and headed toward the sound of chaos, with Kim right behind him.
“Already told everybody?”
“Well, I may or may not have left Alex and Helena out of the loop…”
“Kim.”
“They’d find out anyway,” Kim said. “I got to use my brain parts to get in touch with them, even over wi-fi that shit feels dirty.”
“Just get in- stop.”
Vell held out his hand. Kim froze in place and did not move. Not intentionally, at least. There was a small amount of unintentional movement. The ground was vibrating.
“Always love a good earthquake,” Kim said.
“That’s not a quake,” Vell said. “That’s...footsteps!”
Vell grabbed Kim and dove out of the way just in time for something to barrel through the walls of the dining hall and stampede across the room. Tables, chairs, and more than a few students were crushed under the feet of a hulking, brown-furred behemoth as it charged. Kim picked herself and Vell up off the floor and tried to trail its progress.
“That’s a- oh fuck me,” Kim said. “Please don’t say you told me so.”
Vell got his bearings and looked across the room at the titanic form of a woolly mammoth. Though it was definitely recognizable as an archaic mammoth, the ancient creature was also heavily mutated, unnaturally large even by mammoth standards, and with multiple curled, jagged tusks protruding from a slobbering maw.
“Well that could be unrelated,” Vell said. “Mammoths can come from a lot of places, cloning accidents, time machines…”
The mammoth reached a wall, and rather than barreling through, turned around, facing directly towards Vell. A prominent scar covered the bridge of its broad trunk.
“Oh, nope, that’s definitely Mae,” Vell said. The scar was in the same place and at the same angle. Even a clone wouldn’t have an identical scar.
Once the revelation had struck, Mae took her turn. Vell found himself staring straight down the barrel of a very angry mammoth coming right at him at Vell-squishing velocity. Luckily he’d been charged at by a lot of creatures over four years of looping.
Vell jumped up and to the side, and latched on to one of the curled tusks, which made for very convenient handlebars. Kim did the same on the opposite side of Mae, and punched her in the head.
“Wait, wait, hold off on the violence for a second,” Vell shouted. He tried to wave at Kim to stop, but Mae was thrashing so violently he had to grip the tusks with both hands.
“Good plan,” Kim shouted. “Can you get Mae on board?”
Another set of tables got crushed underfoot. Thankfully the other students were out of trampling range by now, but Mae Noi’s feet were still coated in the blood of earlier victims.
“Mae’s smart, maybe we can calm her down,” Vell said. He then ducked to dodge a swat from Mae’s mutated trunk.
“Call me crazy, Vell, but I think this is more than just a bad mood,” Kim said, as she climbed up Mae’s seven jagged tusks like a ladder.
“We have to try,” Vell said. The loopers rule against hurting other intelligent life forms had some flexibility for blood-crazed mutants on violent rampages, but they had to at least try to reason first. Vell climbed up on of Mae’s tusks and looked into one of her bloodshot eyes for any sign of recognition. “Mae! It’s Vell, do you remember?”
The only response Vell got was an enraged trumpet, which he didn’t think was a “yes”.
“Come on, bud,” Vell said. “What’s an elephant’s favorite part of a tree, right? The trunk?”
The massive brown eye staring at Vell blinked, and he felt a brief glimmer of hope. He then felt a brief glimmer of his lungs being crushed as Mae swung her head and slammed her tusks into the wall, and Vell along with them. Kim punched Mae in the throat and then jumped across the tusks to grab Vell and carry him to safety.
“You okay, Vell?”
He opened his mouth to respond, and a pint or two of blood came out instead.
“Apparently not,” he mumbled. “I might be down a few ribs. And a lung. Or two.”
Kim carried Vell a safe distance from the fight and set him down on the ground, where he promptly spat out another mouthful of blood.
“Okay, uh, you just lie there and try to die peacefully, I guess,” Kim said.
“Way ahead of you.”
***
“Was that last bit as funny as I thought it was?” Vell asked. “I think the blood loss was affecting my sense of humor.”
“It was kind of hard to appreciate in the moment,” Kim said. “But as far as dying jokes go, it was pretty good.”
Vell and Kim walked into the lair for their morning meeting and joined the loopers that had already gathered.
“Okay, what’d I miss while I was dead?”
“Well, after Alex was done getting herself killed,” Samson began.
“You’re saying that as if it’s something to be ashamed of,” Alex said. “Vell also died.”
“Yeah, but he got killed trying to do something good. You got killed trying to do something stupid.”
“Trying to eliminate a threat is not stupid,” Alex said.
“We don’t kill intelligent creatures,” Hawke said. “Sometimes we punch them into a coma, but we don’t kill them.”
“When a dog bites, you put it down, I don’t see why the same principle doesn’t apply to a mammoth that’s crushed seventy people.”
“That wasn’t Mae’s fault,” Vell said. “She got mutated, or something. On that note: did you guys figure out what happened to Mae Noi?”
“Nothing,” Hawke said. “Looked like Mae smashed up the entire lab, trampled everyone involved in the experiment too. Nothing left to investigate, and nobody left alive to interrogate.”
“Typical,” Vell sighed. “At least we have an easy out. Dean Lichman was really concerned about the ethics of that whole experiment. We raise some kind of complaint, we could probably get the whole thing shut down.”
“The problem is getting the complaint,” Hawke said. “That lab was airtight, Vell.”
“Apparently not completely airtight,” Kim said. “I can camp out in the lab and raise an entirely justifiable stink whenever something capable of making a murder-mammoth shows up.”
“And what if it happens so suddenly you can’t complain about it?” Samson asked. “For all we know that could’ve been some kind of dimensional rift, or time anomaly, or something. It might not be as simple as somebody just putting in the wrong syringe at the wrong time.”
“He’s got a point,” Vell said. “We might want to shut this down before it gets there.”
“Seems like our best option is to plant evidence, then,” Alex said.
Everyone else at the table spent a few seconds brainstorming ways to prove her wrong, and much to their frustration, could not.
“Okay, fine,” Vell said. “But it needs to be something incidental, not something anyone would get blamed for. We want to cancel the experiment, not get anyone in trouble.”
“I could have a seizure on some sensitive equipment,” Helena offered. “It’ll break something and nobody would dare get mad at me.”
“Can you fake a seizure?”
“No, but I’m allergic to elephants, so I’d probably have one anyway the moment I stepped in the lab,” Helena said.
“I don’t feel entirely comfortable sending you into anaphylactic shock for a bit,” Vell said.
“Offer’s on the table,” Helena said. “I’ll live. Wouldn’t have made it through that trip to the zoo otherwise.”
“Anybody have any non-medical emergency suggestions?”
“Seagull in the air vents,” Kim said.
“Will that work?”
“It happens now and then,” Kim said. “Seagull gets in, and Dean has to close down the whole lab for potential material damage and biohazard risks if they shit in the vents.”
“Really? We’ve never had to deal with anything like that,” Hawke said.
“It may shock you to learn that sometimes minor, tedious bullshit happens that we have nothing to do with,” Kim said.
“That is kind of surprising, actually.”
“Enough. Kim, can you grab a seagull?” Vell asked. He shouldered his bookbag, and stuck a hand into the extradimensional pocket that existed within it. “I can probably smuggle it in with my bag.”
“Yeah, I can get you a seagull,” Kim said. Since she did not need to sleep, she had to find ways to keep herself entertained at night, seagull-grabbing being among them.
“Alright, we’ll go grab one and put it in the bag,” Vell said. “The rest of you, be ready to meet us when I call.”
***
Roughly three minutes later, Vell put out the call and they reconvened in front of the biology lab.
“Yeah, that was much faster than I thought it would be,” Vell said.
“I’m great at grabbin’ birds,” Kim said. Seagulls were among the easier birds to snatch, even. They were suckers for food, and many of them were attracted to her shiny metallic body anyway.
“Let’s just get this over with,” Vell said. “I want this thing out of my bag ASAP.”
Even though the seagull was safely within a pocket dimension, Vell would swear he could still feel the bird thrashing and squawking inside his bag. He tightened his grip on the shoulder strap and led the way towards the zoology lab entrance. He grabbed the handle and held it as he froze for a second.
“Vell, what’s up? Is this bird escaping?”
“No, the handle’s vibrating,” Vell said. It was shaking the same way a wall near an incredibly loud speaker might. He pressed his ear to the door and listened closely. He opened the door immediately, and let all his friends hear the frantic trumpeting of a panicked elephant.
Inside the lab, Mae Noi was stomping her feet and trumpeting as loud as he long trunk would allow. She swayed from side to side in her pen, bumping against the walls not quite hard enough to damage them, but hard enough that it was clear she was doing it on purpose.
“What the heck is happening here?”
“Ah, Vell,” Dean Lichman said. He hustled over to Vell’s side and gestured to the entire room. “Maybe you can figure out what’s going on.”
Mae Noi stopped braying long enough to start mashing her trunk against her pedestal, mashing out the word “Bad” over and over again.
“Our test subject, Mae Noi, has been throwing an absolute fit ever since she got here,” Dean Lichman said. “Dr. Chanthara, these are the students I was telling you about earlier.”
While Vell reintroduced himself to Dr. Chanthara, Kim and Hawke stepped up to examine Mae Noi and her enclosure. It was a far cry from the peaceful, orderly scene they had examined on the first loop. They were half an hour earlier this time than before, but Kim found it unlikely that they had been able to calm Mae Noi down, clean everything up, and get back to work in such a short amount of time. They hadn’t mentioned any of this panic on the first loop either. They were soon joined in their confusion by Chanthara and Vell.
“We’ve tried everything; food, water, her favorite toys, even videos of her children,” Dr. Chanthara said. “We’ve even offered to call off the experiment, but she won’t listen.”
“She is an animal,” Alex said. “Sometimes they do things arbitrarily.”
“Not Mae,” Dr. Chanthara said. “Some of our sanctuaries residents from traumatic backgrounds can have outbursts, but Mae was injured in the wild. She’s never been like this.”
“Maybe some experiment on the island is upsetting her,” Vell said. “A sonic experiment only she can hear, or something…”
Vell stopped and thought about it. If there had been such an irritant, it would’ve been there on the first loop too. Everything always repeated exactly the same, except for-
“Could you, uh, take a step back for a second?” Vell mumbled. “I want to try talking to her.”
“Don’t get close,” Chanthara warned him.
“I’m not, I’m not,” Vell said. He didn’t need to get very close to tell a joke.
The massive brown eyes of Mae Noi stayed locked on Vell as he approached, and she continued to mash the “Bad” button on her pedestal.
“I know, I know, bad,” Vell said. “But, uh, do you want to hear a joke?”
Mae Noi stopped. She locked eyes with Vell for a few seconds, and then cautiously tapped a button on her pedestal.
“Joke.”
“Right, joke,” Vell said. He tried to recall the exact sequence of words Mae had used on the first loop. “What elephant favorite part tree?”
Mae didn’t blink.
“Trunk,” Vell said.
After a moment of contemplation, Mae Noi let out one final, fervent, trumpet, and then started mashing buttons on her pedestal again.
“Bad. Help. Help. Experiment. Bad. Help. Bad. Help.”
“Yeah, bad help, one second,” Vell said. He turned away from Mae Noi to look at Dean Lichman. “Hey, uh, excuse me, Dean? Hey, uh, if I remember correctly there are some pretty complicated rules on having intelligent animals on campus, yes?”
“Well, yes,” Dean Lichman said. After hearing of some questionable ethical practices involving an octopus back in first year, he had instituted a few clauses into the school’s ethical code of conduct regarding intelligent animals like elephants, octopuses, and dolphins. “Mae’s presence here is a bit of an outlier, but there were workaround, given her apparent consent to the experiment.”
“Yeah, about that, is she, uh,” Vell began. “Is she registered as a student?”
“Yes.”
Vell pursed his lips. It took a few seconds for his friends to catch on.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Samson snapped. He turned his back on the crowd and leaned against a wall while Hawke put his head in his hands.
“The first rule of looping,” Alex said quietly. “Loopers are randomly selected-”
She looked up and locked eyes with Mae Noi.
“From all registered students.”

I can already read comments on Reddit and YouTube comments saying the game feels sweaty and that SBMM must be activated even outside of the Welcome Playlist. This is NOT the case. My best guess is most of the players are jumping from COD and most of the COD community have a "sweaty" play style.
It didn't help that Activision cranked up CODs SBMM and most likely introduced EOMM into the franchise in 2019. This lead to people's K/D being forced DOWN regardless of each individual skill level. The system used in COD wants every player to have 1KD and 0.5 W/L ratio regardless of skill.
What I mean by this is, let's say your "Skill power is 400" (Imaginary number) but your K/D will still hoover around 1 (In most cases) because you are being constantly matched with other players that has a skill power around 390 - 410. It's own bracket of the same skill.
This leads to my point! My friend worked full time and has a 3yo kid, his K/D in the most recent COD is .97. His score per minute is an abysmal low at 30- 40 points last time i talked to him. And he is to put it lightly, MUCH worse than me who has a K/D of 1.04, it's night and day. When we 1v1 he gets barley no kills on me. Yet he sends me Snapchats of him getting 11 kills on Terminal and is proud.
Your 1KD lobbies are different to other 1KD lobbies. Call of Duty has literally put blindfolds on us, and it's showing when we play other games. People will find XDefiant "sweaty" because they have been playing inside a bracket with people within their skill in recent CODs.
I am currently doing 25% better (Taking numbers out of my ass) outside the Welcome Playlist. I played around 5-6 matches in the Welcome Playlist, and my games became mediocre (SBMM at play). Any other mode feels chill and I've played around 30 games so far.

My name is Luyan, I was born in April 1970, in the village of Qingtaipao, Jinzhou City, China. My father was an electrical technician in a nearby brick factory. Mom was a farmer.
One day in September 1971, A guest came to our home, whom my father called Old Brother Liu from Shenyang (1). Dad said to mom: “Troupe Leader Liu knows physiognomy, and I want him to have a look our Luyan." Mom was impatient. Dad added: "Troupe Leader Liu is not a stranger, you should be more enthusiastic! he said, ‘He should not have Luyan seen him, otherwise it won't work'.” Mom and Dad went out of the bedroom. The three of them were whispering in the kitchen. Troupe Leader Liu asked about my birth date.
https://preview.redd.it/pqfqha639v1d1.jpg?width=1528&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25c81882fd0189d4814c5f6975993f188cd287ec
Note 1, at this time, he was the deputy chief of the Northeast Military Region's Cultural Troupe, about 40 years old, a division officer. He is commonly referred to in this book as Troupe Leader Liu. Before and after this story, I couldn't hear his voice. He spoke in ancient Han; I heard what they were doing from my father's explanation to my mother.

2

Troupe Leader Liu said he wanted to see me and wrinkled the curtain between the kitchen and the bedroom. I didn't see him. Dad explained to mom what he said, "That wantonness he's sitting on, the high beam nose to forehead, is a monk's fate, no marriage life."
"What does that mean, no marriage? He can't get married for the rest of his life?" Mom asked.
After dad inquired with Troupe Leader Liu, explained to mom: "It is possible to get married, but the marriage is not happy or long-lasting."
Mom got upset after hearing that and came inside. My dad and Troupe Leader Liu were talking outside. After a while, Dad came into the bedroom and said to mom, "Why did you just leave!"
Mom replied: "He's godly! Who believes that nowadays."
Dad said: "People can see that, and you're not happy to hear it! He also told me that he was just speaking straight from his heart according to what the ancient books say, just directly speaking what he deemed truth. You shouldn’t be like that! If you don't believe, it's okay to just listen! You come out and talk together!"
Mom followed Dad out, asking as she walked: "What is it again?"
In the kitchen, Dad said to Mom: "Troupe Leader Liu said that his eldest daughter, Jianjun Liu (Eve Liu), is a sky fate (Goddess fate), gifted and smart, but also has a destined bad marriage life. He wants to betroth her to our Luyan; says the two are quite compatible. By tying them together as a pair, both of their bad marriage destinies will be broken."
Mom replied: "Look at his appearance! What can his daughter look like!"
Dad said: "That's just saying, his family is well off. Besides, his appearance is not good, his wife might be pretty!"
Mom said: "His family is doing well now. In this society, twenty years later, who knows what will happen!"
Dad said: "It's not good to refuse someone's offer. Besides, this is just a saying, in the future, the two children will become a couple or not, is the matter of the two of them. Now, we are trying to break Luyan’s bad marriage fate!"

3 Blindfolding

A little later, Dad and Troupe Leader Liu returned to the kitchen. Troupe Leader Liu said, "If I'm right, the boy will cry as soon as he sees me; however, he can only see me this one time."
Mom was in the back, and when she heard that, said, "There's that! Let's try it then! It won't hurt to see him once anyway."
They arranged the subsequent experiment in a whisper. Troupe Leader Liu added, “Then I'll blindfold him.”
Dad and mom both said they didn't understand.
Troupe Leader Liu said, “Oops! I just remembered that I can't let him see me again in the future!” After thinking for a while, he added, “It's okay! I'll arrange for someone to uncover the blindfold later.”
Mom said unhappily, "Why it doesn't matter!"
Dad smiled and said, "We don't understand, but if Troupe Leader Liu said it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter!"
At that time, I was sitting on the bed in the bedroom; a man came in and walked straight into the inner room. Soon I forgot about it. Suddenly, he came out and walked directly toward me face to face, his face bloodless and expressionless. My mind exploded at the sight, before I could react. He floated back to the center of the house floor, and quickly turned toward the kitchen and out. Frightened, I crawled desperately toward the southeast of the bed, howling!
https://preview.redd.it/pdjyyt889v1d1.jpg?width=2024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=163f3f013bc9ef146f5f8b8976698efdde776532
Note 3, this paragraph describes the first step of the “Flesh Eye Through”: He approached me quickly, and as I watched, I felt as if the camera lens were focusing quickly, and my head felt as if it were going to explode. The shock caused me to fall in “children neurodevelopmental disorder”. One symptom of this disorder is visual impairment, which the ancients said blindfolded the eyes. The process of Revelation is in section 2.8; chapter 3 discussed more about the process of making “Flesh Eye Through”. Illustrations 1-3, left, are of ancient Mexican origin and represent the third step of the Flesh Eye Through practice, which Huitzilopochtli is lecturing to his godson. Figure 2 shows Tlaloc, whose eyes, in author my own opinion, are the ancient Mexican description of "non-dazzle" feature of the eyes. Figure 3 is a bronze mask unearthed at Sanxingdui in China, in author my own opinion, that is a description of the eyes of the “Flesh Eye Through” as “touching eyes”, i.e., the person who sees it may have the feeling of "being touched”, "being electrocuted".

In the kitchen, mom was surprised and said: "Oops! Really crying! What to do!"
Dad said, "We agreed, you go in and comfort him!"
Mom ran into the house and shouted, "What's wrong? What's wrong?"
I crawled to the edge of the bed and hugged mom, crying. Dad also came in.
Mom said angrily, "He was scared! We were both away and suddenly he saw a stranger. Look! Oh! My God! His hairs are standing on end! He scared the kid!"
Dad said, "Troupe Leader Liu asked you to ask."
Mom asked, "What? Ah! What's wrong? Tell mom, what's going on?"
I just, “Woo, woo!” gesticulated and couldn't speak.
Mom muttered angrily, "Just scared! This can't even speak anymore!” Mom stroked my head, and continually said, “All right! Ok! Tell mom, what did you see?”
I replied, "Man! Woo! Woo!”, gesturing with my hands.
Mom said to me, "Ah! A man came in and then went out again. It's okay, your dad and I know about it!"

4 Marriage Contract is sealed.

Dad went to the kitchen, came back a while later, and said to mom, "Troupe Leader Liu went out and asked us to discuss the two children's affairs."
Mom said, "Like you said, it's not a big deal. How much does he want?"
https://preview.redd.it/6c0t36wc9v1d1.jpg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=283bf64e30a17faa985b77f22065644d37549c29
Dad said, “He didn't say anything about money! It isn’t about money, is it?”
Mom said, "It's better to ask."
The three of them were talking in the kitchen. Troupe Leader Liu said, "Then the marriage is settled! There's no need for any money. This matter also concerns my girl! It's also my business, so I'll make the law (do the magic)."
Dad asked, "What should we do then?"
Troupe Leader Liu said, "I'll tell you later. While you were discussing this matter, I did something outside. Now, half of their Fates have been broken. The rest of the “Making Laws” (western similar words: to do magic) will be done outside somewhere in the future, might not in your house."
Dad said, "It's great that little Luyan will be able to get married in the future! Good Job! It’s all thanks to big brother's hard work!”

5 Vision Test

Some days later, my dad had just returned from work and was talking to my mom. The bedroom opening in my house is about 6.5 meters by 3.3 meters; however, I was surrounded by white fog and couldn't see them. Mom said: "Eve Liu gives gift to Luyan! Quickly let him have a look!”.
https://preview.redd.it/luq5sicg9v1d1.jpg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=be6924f7c175eb6dcef80cd756888c002907a3f4
When I crawled very close to my dad, saw the two toys he brought back: a yellow plastic gyro and a red ornate stick with spots of various colors. As I recall now, at that time, I could see a place 0.5m away and 0.9m in diameter, surrounded by white fog (note 5, this is a symptom of children neurodevelopmental disorder). I could only see half the width of my dad's body, not my mom. It is now estimated that I can't be more than 1.4m away from mom.
Mom said to Dad, "Looks like the kid has an eye problem! Getting down that close to see!"

6 Eve Liu

Another day, I was sitting on the bed in our bedroom, and my father said to my mother with a smile, “The other guy, that who, went to Shenyang and saw the Troupe Leader Liu. His family is doing well. I even asked him about his big girl (i.e., Eve Liu). How old is she!? She runs around, is not afraid of strangers, talks to people when she sees them, recites poems, sings songs, and can-do arithmetic within 100.”
Mom replied, “You still remember! She goes to a daycare center or kindergarten! I've heard that's where people are taught. What does that kid look like?”
Dad replied, "That I didn't ask."
Mom laughed and said, “You hid it from me!" Turning to me and said, "This little man, has a wife in the big city. In the future, after we go to school, we'll study hard and be better than her, we look down her! We're not going to climb up that high branch!”
Dad said, “Why don't you know? I couldn't ask. All he said was that the little girl was so smart, not afraid of strangers, and ran around the front and back yards. Such a little girl! Who can say she looks ugly!?”
Mom went into the inner room and stopped talking. At that time, I really wanted to listen. Mom noticed and said to Dad, “Little Luyan probably understands this! As soon as we talked Eve Liu, he stared and concentrated, listening very carefully!"
It seems that by this time, my eyesight had returned to near normal.
The End

To start this story off, I suppose it's best to talk a little bit about myself and my experience in the TTRPG space. I've been an avid TTRPG enthusiast for almost two decades now. Yes, I'm a bit of an old hat/old fogey. I started my enjoyment of the hobby with Pathfinder 1st edition, eventually transferring over to DnD 5e when it first arrived on the scene, mostly because it was the new hotness, but I ultimately found that it was better suited for the type of games that I enjoy running at my table. While I very adamantly enjoy the structure that a game's mechanical rules bring to the table, 5e provided a rules system that wasn't invasive, and so me and my friends were able to focus on the things about the game that we enjoyed the most - the roleplaying, the storytelling, and (most importantly) the fun.
Many years would go by, as well as a couple of what I would consider to be successful campaigns - basically anything that managed to survive longer than 3 months. Scheduling, right? I digress. Eventually, I arrived at a point where my current circle of friends and I were itching to play a new campaign, and for the shits and giggles of it we decided we would livestream it on Twitch. At the time, we had managed to get affiliated on Twitch, and one or two of us would occasionally have a couple of viewers pop in when we were streaming whatever video game we were playing, and we figured it would be fun to do the same thing with our next campaign. So we did. As you might expect, nothing really ever came out of it. We were just doing it for fun. The campaign only lasted about 3 months or so, and we never set out with the expectation that what we were releasing into the world was anything amazing - we were just four normal dudes having fun playing a game we enjoyed, and if you happened to find yourself on our Twitch channel to see it, awesome! If not, cool. We weren't doing it for you.
So, yeah, that campaign eventually fell off, and we would eventually return to just streaming whatever video game excited us. One of friends got married, and had a kid, and was too busy for DnD. Another friend got a new job, and his schedule just didn't give him the time. Hell, even I managed to land a pretty decent job at the time, and I struggled to make time for our weekly video game nights, but I managed. But ever since that streamed campaign had ended, I had an itch in the back of my mind that I really wanted to scratch. I thoroughly enjoyed everything about livestreaming our campaign. Sure, it was nothing to write home about, but I fell in love with the showmanship of it all. Maybe it was because of the thought of the potential for someone to eventually watch it, but whenever we would stream, I would get in the zone and pretend I was putting on a show for thousands (even though we may have only ever had three or four viewers at max). Basically, I had fallen in love with the idea of putting on a show for others, and I knew I would jump at the chance to do it again in the future. Enter Wayne.
A little over a year ago (at the time of this posting), I was perusing through the /LFG subreddit and not looking for anything in particular, when I stumbled across a post that checked off all the boxes.
I don't like to admit that I'm picky, but that fact that this sub exists should give credence to that fact that one should, at the very least, have a criteria when looking for games to invest yourself in when looking at advertisements. And if my little backstory above should inform you, there were a number of things on my checklist that this post had. For starters, it was longer than a few sentences. Clearly, the person who posted this was meticulous about what they wanted and what they didn't want (I would learn, much later on, that Wayne was not the one who wrote the post, but one of his players). Secondly, the post was very adamant about what was of paramount importance at the table - rich and compelling narratives, deep exploration of characters, and a passion for roleplay. And thirdly, the plan was to turn this into a "production". The post even included a promo video of respectable quality. Clearly, the people involved with this had a plan, much more of a plan than my friends and I had when we streamed. And, I considered myself a pretty decent roleplayer, so I applied. They were only looking for 1 applicant, but I figured I had a decent shot, with my previous livestreaming experience, and the fact that I already owned a (what some would call excessive) microphone and camera. So I shot my shot. If I didn't get picked, no biggie, life goes on. But when I received a discord invite and told that I had made it to the second round of the application process, I was ecstatic.
It is around here that I should introduce you to our cast of characters (names have been changed, of course:

• There is, of course, me, Dave - a guy who fundamentally believes that fun and safety at a table supersedes everything else, who happens to really enjoy hamming it up in character, and telling exciting stories.
  
• Ava - an already confirmed player at the table, with a past experience of playing with Wayne. I would come to find out that Ava was the one who had written the LFG post. Ava was also in charge of Discord moderation, and the second round interview process. She has her own story, which I will allude to here, but is ultimately hers to share.
  
• Jelly - Wayne's significant other. Jelly was supposedly not involved with the upcoming campaign at all, but had a presence on the Discord, and have previously played in Wayne's campaigns.
  Seth - another already confirmed player at the table. Admittedly, Seth plays a minor role in the story, but his inclusion is necessary.
  
  • and Wayne - the lead character of our story. The DM of the upcoming campaign. The visionary. The guy who plans to have the next big thing in the TTRPG actual play space.

There are at least a half dozen other individuals involved in this story, but ultimately play very minor roles. If at some point while I am writing this one of them pop up, I will update the list above to include them.
Back to the story. I was ecstatic to find out I had been selected for an Discord interview and scheduled it at my earliest convenience. This is where I first meet Ava. To be honest, I don't recall much about the interview, but I remember it being pretty standard and what I was expecting an interview to be. Mostly it was just going into detail about some of the stuff I had included in my primary application and talking about expectations and goals. I was told that after the Discord interview, the next step would be a participation in a practice one shot, to get a feel for how I would play at the table. After the interview was over, Wayne hopped into the voice channel, and this would be when I would meet the man, the legend.
I pride myself on being very good at reading people. I can usually pick up on when someone is trying to sell me something, pretty quickly. I tend to over analyze words and expression looking for intent. I have been gaslit and manipulated several times in my past by people very close to me, and so I have developed this defense when meeting people for the first time. Very rarely do I take someone at their word, or completely buy what they are selling when I hardly know them, and even less so to a complete stranger. In this case, when meeting Wayne for the first time, my defenses failed me.
Perhaps it was because it had been over a year since I last ran a campaign. Perhaps it was because it had been even longer than that that I actually got to be a player in a campaign. Perhaps it was because of that itch of wanting to perform again for an audience. Or, perhaps, it was because Wayne was very good at pitching his plans. Whatever the reason, my first impression of Wayne was that this was a guy who had a plan, and had the means to enact that plan, and I wanted to be a part of it in any way that I could.
Wayne, you see, had two big passions in life. The first was DnD. The second, as he would admit, was being an entrepreneur. He owned his own business in New York City. One of several ventures he had pursued, and it afforded him a premium NYC apartment and the time and luxury to spend on his second passion - playing DnD. And so, he thought, why not marry these two passions together? He had a great head for business. And according to him, the last campaign he had run was fantastic. So fantastic, he thought, that surely other people would enjoy listening to it. And so he hatched a plan - he would use his business knowledge and savvy to launch a Youtube channel that would be home to his next great campaign. But he had the foresight, at least, to know of just how saturated the DnD actual play space has become in recent years. If he wanted to be successful at this venture, he would have to stand out from the rest. And he had a solution to that. He wasn't going to put out just any old DnD actual play. He was going to create "DnD Cinema".
To do that, he said, he needed the right people that share in the same core philosophies that he had. Namely, a "pretentious level of hyperfixation on roleplaying and narrative storytelling". Most other actual plays, to him, were playing "beer and pretzels" DnD. You know, the type of game were you sit around with your friends having a good time and a laugh, where you might spend five minutes on an out of character joke, etc. Shit like that wasn't going to fly in this campaign. When you came to the table, you were going to be in character from start to finish. And recording sessions were going to be seven hours long. Could I handle that?
And I admit that I told him I could. Like I said, he had a way with words. He was clearly passionate about it. And he talked a good talk. And he was friendly enough. So he said he would be in touch. And the wait began.
Over the course of the next month or so, I would come to become friends with Ava and Wayne. We would hop into Discord and play games, talk about the upcoming campaign, etc. It was going to be several months before the campaign actually began recording, and so Wayne was still conducting the interview process while also working on worldbuilding for the campaign. He was also spending over $3000 dollars commissioning an animated table for the youtube video. This was clearly something he was very proud of, as he took every and all opportunity to talk about how amazing and innovative it was going to be.
You see, in Wayne's vision of "DnD cinema", the videos that would be put up on youtube would not include the faces of the players. Or battlemaps. Instead, it would be animated table that he could manipulate in editing at various cue points. It would feature portraits of the characters that would light up when they speak. It was the next big thing in the TTRPG space - a (frankly) audio only experience that was accentuated with the occasional fancy animation that cost thousands of dollars. No one else was doing it, he would say, and that would help him stand out even more.
It was also during these more innocent days that I would come to understand Wayne's obsession with Brennan Lee Mulligan. He idolized the guy. In fact, he would brag on multiple occasions that his significant other's job had her 3 or 4 degrees removed from Brennan - basically, she worked for someone who worked for someone who was involved with the Dungeons and Drag Queens season of Dimension 20, and he would often mention how he was hoping to use that connection to someday have a sit down and meet and greet with BLeeM himself. As time would go on, I would eventually find out that Wayne actually considered Brennan Lee Mulligan as his competition.
About a month would past before I would hear anything about my application. I never brought it up during our gaming sessions, as another core tenet of mine is that I don't want my friendship or acquaintance with someone to give me an edge over other candidates. I want my experience and what I bring to the table to stand on its own merit. This will come up later in our story. Eventually, I would get a message from Wayne asking me if I would be interested in participating in a try out one shot for the campaign. Apparently, he had completely forgotten that I had applied, and wanted to schedule in a last minute try out for me. My fellow players during the one shot would be Ava, some other member of the discord community, and Jelly.
I'll be honest, the one shot was nothing to write home about. And even Wayne would admit it was something he threw together last minute so that he could say I had my chance. I immediately found Ava to be a fantastic scene partner, and even for a one shot, put the time and effort into her character and actions. Jelly, on the other hand, was not that good. To be fair to Jelly, my criteria for grading her performance was strictly on the curve that Wayne himself said he was grading people on. I found her to be a very selfish player, who failed to pick up on narrative cues, and was solely focused on her time in the spotlight. But it was a trial one shot that didn't mean anything. My biggest take away from Jelly was that she was a player that I would not enjoy playing with in the future, and that I wouldn't seek out as a player at a table that I was DMing for. Not horror story bad (yet), but not good. Average.
When the application process was done, it would eventually come down to two choices. I was one. Wayne loved my southern twang, and thought it would sound good in a production. And we had become friends. The other was someone with a theater and acting background, who had been to Julliard. I was not selected. And I was okay with that. The decision did not impact my friendship with either Ava or Wayne, and we continued to hang out and play games together. I then learned of Wayne's new plan.
In the original posting ad for the campaign, it had been mentioned that a possibility for guest character appearing in the campaign could happen. The original idea was that, as members of the Discord community would play in one shots, Wayne would then be able to invite stand out performance to appear in an episode or two of the new campaign, as a gift to the community and to give those players a chance to play in a campaign with other players of similar caliber. This all changed as the months got closer to release date. The idea for guests at the table changed completely. Instead, Wayne's plan was to use the guest spots at the table as a networking opportunity. Don't forget - Wayne is an entrepreneur. This was a business venture for him, and successful businesses need to show growth. And he wanted to achieve growth at an accelerated pace. The plan was simple - as the channel grew, Wayne would scour the internet for similar channels with slightly higher subscriber count than his. Well, I say Wayne would do this. Wayne would actually pawn this off on to someone else. A tangent that I will perhaps need to touch on later in this story - Wayne was very good at finding ways of pawning off work on to others, and then taking the credit. He very much believe himself to be a manager, and other members of the Discord that showed any interest in the success of this venture as his employees. He would then engage in communications with these other channels in the hopes of achieving some Quid Pro Quo. You send someone to be a guest on our channel for a few episodes, and we'll shout you out. In return, he would send someone from his channel to theirs, and get a shout out in return. Something to note here - all of this was done without ever including his players in the discussion. He was offering them up to strangers without even asking if they even wanted to do that.
Time passes, and eventually recording for the campaign begins. It would be about two months into recording when Wayne approached me about being the first guest character. (At this point, I had been an active member of the Discord community for over six months now). He wanted me to be the first guest character for two reasons. The first was because I was familiar, and he wanted to test out the format before bringing in strangers. The second was because of my prior livestreaming experience. I was a part of an affiliated Twitch channel that met the criteria of having a slightly higher subscriber count than his. But for the most part, our old Twitch channel was dead. Sure, we still streamed games into the void, but there was practically no engagement. And I told him so when he asked me if I wanted to be introduced as someone from that Twitch channel. I was more involved in his community as that point, anyway. And so, I finally got what I was wanting - to sit down and play quality DnD with like minded individuals for the purposes of entertaining others.
At this point, only a handful of episodes had aired. The recording schedule had them a grace period of a month or so before release, and I admittedly hadn't watched them. Honestly, I wasn't that interested. I don't know if that's bad or not. There are a lot of actual plays out there of varying quality. And each one requires a lot of time commitment to watch. Already I was regularly watching Critical Roll, and I was having a hard time to find time to watch some of the other really good shows I was enjoying, like Dimension 20 and The Glass Cannon. On top of that, it was an game that I wasn't a part of, so yeah, I admit I hadn't watch any of it. But even if I had, it wouldn't have prepared me for what playing at the table was actually like. The released episodes were highly edited, with sound effects and music. It wasn't until I became actually involved at the table that I would find out just how manufactured the game actually was. And I use the word "game" very generously.
For starters, once recording began, all out of character talk and banter was immediately and explicitly forbidden. We were to remain in character at all times. Secondly, I would find out that Wayne had developed a "formula for success" in regards to time spent recording. No scene would ever last longer than ten minutes. If players spent too much time having their characters engaging with each other and the time elapsed, we were moving on the next scene, regardless of if it was a natural conclusion or not. Speaking of the characters, I would come to learn that the characters that the player brought to this campaign were secondary to the story that Wayne wanted to tell. "This campaign isn't character focused, it's story focused" he would say. The campaign simply did not have time for that. I don't like to toss out the word "railroaded" very often, but it quickly became apparent that there was a good bit of railroading being done here. The only character decisions or choices or conversations that would ever make it to the final cut were ones that provided what he thought would be the most interesting while pushing his narrative forward. And for a DnD game, there wasn't a whole lot of game being done here. Sure, the players had character sheets, and classes, but it was all superficial. Combat was a rarity on the level of a shiny Pokemon. I think mostly because Wayne didn't find combat narratively compelling. But in that case, I have to ask, why use DnD as your game system? If all you want to do is roll clicky dice and improv, there are much better systems out there. And speaking of the dice - I'm sad to say that in most cases they were superfluous, as well. The only real purpose the dice served to Wayne was when they could be used to clip epic moments of success or failure. A natural 20 or a natural 1 was gold for him, because then he could clip it into a Youtube or Tiktok Short and grow those subscriber numbers. For a game in which "every decision hung on the roll of a dice", there weren't a lot of dice rolls, there weren't a lot of decisions, and when there were decisions, most of the time, the outcome was predetermined by Wayne. Everything Wayne did in regards to this game was in service to growing his Youtube channel. And the sad part? It worked.
In a shockingly short amount of time, Wayne was able to grow his Youtube channel from just over a 100 subscribers to over a 1000. This was mostly done by his excessive push of Youtube and Tiktok shorts. For a short period of time, I was deemed trustworthy enough to have access to the Youtube channel's admin, and I could view the statistics. The turnover rate for shorts into actual video views was miniscule. Only a tiny fraction were tuning in for the actual show. At this point, he had just become a Youtube Shorts creator.
And I want to mention at this point - I understand and respect the hustle. The world of Youtube is a dog eat dog world, and you have to have to play the game to stay in the game - I get it. I don't have any issue with being proud of what you've created, and pushing it out to people. I really don't. My issue was with how deceptive Wayne was being with it. And how deceptive he was, in general, as I would come to find out.
You see, before the inaugural campaign had even launched, Wayne approached me one day to see if I would be interested in running a campaign on his channel, as I had experience before in it, and had expressed an interest in doing it again. And I will admit, I was excited about the prospect. But before my words of "Yeah, I'd love to talk about" even had a chance to dissipate into the ether, Jelly would hop into the channel, in the middle of the discussion to say, "You know who should run a campaign? Seth." And then immediately log off.
I don't have a lot to say about Seth. I think he is an amazing, caring, friendly guy. He also happens to be an incredible roleplayer and storyteller, and his character is Wayne's campaign is truly phenomenal. I envy how easy it is for Seth to get into and portray the wide arrange of emotions of a character. He also happens to be a great GM. I understand why Jelly would suggest him to run a campaign. What I didn't understand, at the time, were her motives. Wayne, Ava, Jelly, and Seth had all played in a previous campaign together, and Wayne and Jelly had become enamored by just how good Seth was. And even prior to that, Ava and Seth had a past campaign together. Jelly wanted to be a player in a Seth run campaign. And if Wayne was going to have a second campaign on the channel, she wanted it to be Seth's, and she wanted to be a player in it.
And so, immediately, any and all discussion about me running a campaign was ceased, and the legwork was put forth for Seth to run a campaign. Wayne would approach him about it, and he was interested. Seth would already have in mind the players that he wanted for it - two friends of his from outside the server, Ava, and another player from the Wayne campaign. Noticeably missing from that list - Jelly.
Strangely, Wayne would then tell Seth that if he was going to run a campaign on the channel, he would have to have an application process for the players, and open it up so that anyone could apply. After Seth had already stated he already had players in mind - players who already said yes. I don't know about you, but as a DM, I would never let someone dictate to me who I could have at my table. If I have players in mind already, it's because I have a reason. But Wayne demanded an application process be followed, and a second LFG post would appear in LFG for the Seth run campaign - that was noticeably advertising for 4 players. After Seth had chosen his players. The advertisement came with another well edited and narrated youtube promo that was, and still is, the highest viewed video on the channel. And all of it was a sham. Which I knew it was. And I confronted Wayne about it. It was then that I learned some unsavory backstory involving Ava and Jelly and the prior campaign. That is not my story to tell. I have shared my accounts of events with Ava, and she is considering posting an account from her perspective following this. The most I am willing to say on this is that involves situations that should never be okay at a DnD table, and that Wayne would gloss over and sugarcoat these situations as no big deal. It would lead to Ava not being comfortable with being at a table with Jelly which both I, and Seth, would understand.
Wayne, however, found this to be unfair and manipulative on Ava's part. Those past incidents should have had no bearing on Jelly's consideration for the Seth run campaign. Which is why he would demand an application process. He would then confide to me when I questioned the duplicity of the LFG advertisement that it wasn't completely misleading. There would still be someone chosen from the list of applicants - because he was going to make sure that Ava wasn't part of the campaign. After Seth had already told both Wayne and her that she was. After the players for that game had already come together for a session zero. He claimed that Ava had prior incidents of being difficult to work with, and that because he wasn't involved in the campaign, he couldn't be there to handle any situations that might arise of conflicts between players at the table. At the time I thought that was an odd statement to make - if you are trusting enough of another person, like Seth, to run a campaign on your channel shouldn't you be trusting enough in their ability to handle problems between players? Looking back now, I can only assume he made that statement because he was certain that Jelly would be a player at the table, and that problems might arise between Jelly and Ava. He asked that I keep the conversation between us. But that was something I could not do. None of that situation felt right to me. Wayne, Ava, and I had been friends playing games together for nearly a year now. I never saw any inclination of Ava being a "problem player" - she was great at the table, and a great person to hang out with. And I found it weird that Wayne would say those things about her, and not approach her about it. So of course I talked to her. For weeks she had been sharing her excitement of the new campaign with me, often with Wayne in the voice channel with us. Ava would then share with me her past experiences with Wayne and Jelly. Again, it is not my story to tell, but I am a good judge of character. I believed Ava's account of events. It made sense to me, with how Wayne and Jelly acted.
I wish I could say this story had a happy and/or satisfying conclusion. I'm not even really sure if there is a point to it, or even if it will be a good read. It has been clear for some time now that Wayne has been entirely obsessed with the growing of his Youtube channel, damn any and all bridges burned, and walking back some of his initial promises of what he claimed the campaign and the Youtube channel would be. It's also very clear to me that Wayne is someone who absolutely has to have control over everything, especially the narrative (fictional and real life).
There are so many minor grievances to air about Wayne that I haven't already touched on, and I feel like I've already taken up too much of your time already. Here's just a brief overview, I'd be more than happy to go into more details if you want them:

• Multiple players from the Wayne campaign confided in me about some of the problems they had with Wayne and how the game was being run. When Wayne found out, he blew his lid, and said that he was both Manager and HR, and no one should be complaining to anyone outside of the table. If they were going to complain to anyone, it should be him.
  
  • It turns out, Wayne has a prior history of being an asshole. Long before the Youtube channel, and the campaign, even before the previous campaign, he told his then group that they were playing the game wrong. He then found a new group, sang their praises to the old group, and then even brought both groups together to show the old group "the right way to play"
  • In addition to Wayne, he has two editors working for him. One of which he pays. The other one has had no compensation. The one not getting paid is doing the same work as both Wayne and the paid editor combined.
  • I mentioned way early on in the story that Ava was the Discord Administrator for the Discord server. After the Seth campaign incident, Wayne unceremoniously removed Ava as Administrator, told her it was "by mistake", and never put it back. As far as I can tell, there was nothing to warrant this other than control. I suspect it was because there were certain Seth campaign related channels or other channels he didn't want Ava to see.
  • The unceremonious removal of myself and Ava from the Youtube channel admin. Admittedly, we contributed very little to it, but it was removed without a word mentioned.
  • Recently making a post requiring his "talent" to purchase a minimum $5 dollar Patreon subscription. He has admitted to me the reasoning for this was to inflate Patreon subscriber numbers to entice new subscribers. He has since walked that back after much outcry from the "talent"
  • Asking Seth if it wouldn't be too much to convert his envisioned DnD campaign into a Daggerheart campaign, because Daggerheart is the new hotness, and will attract more viewers.

Ultimately, I suppose I feel disheartened and deceived. Deceived because I originally signed up for what I thought was going to be a bunch of friends sitting around and recording themselves playing quality DnD, and it has shifted so far from that original purpose. Wayne is obsessed over subscriber numbers and views, it's all he ever talks about. He claims that his goal is to reach a level of success to which all 10+ people involved will be able to achieve financial freedom (which he claims is roughly $2000 a month). I'm sure you've done the math, just like I have. Even if you believe $2k a month is financial freedom (I certainly don't), that comes out to $240,000 a year. That's an insane level of success to promise your players. Oh, I'm sorry, your "talent".
I feel disheartened because....there's actually good work being done here. Some of the players are some of the best I've ever played with. Wayne can actually be a good storyteller, when he's not pushing for likes or clicks. The editors do a really fantastic job. I have seen and listened to the work being done on the Seth campaign (luckily Wayne is only tangentially involved), and Seth's campaign is turning out to be something really special. There is something good being done here, but it seems so tainted by Wayne and his obsession for Youtube and Tiktok success. So, maybe this is an RPG Horror Story, maybe it's a cautionary tale. I dunno. I have committed to finishing out my run in the campaign, (I was brought back to the table multiple times because the players enjoy playing with me, and also I suspect I was involved in one of his highest viewed shorts), but my hearts not in it. I've told Wayne I've no interest in any of his future projects, and I wish him well on his Youtube journey. But in the pursuit of clicks, and likes, and subscribers, I feel like he has fundamentally lost what attracts people to actually watch and invest in TTRPG actual plays - authenticity.

I know they had their origins as metabolic slow life on their homeworld. But what does 'slow' mean exactly?
What I know, is that they had little energy to play with when they were still slugs because they didn't live close to the hydrothermal vents on the sea floor. What I'm straight up guessing however, is that because of the little energy they had, they had to be very efficient with it. So slow growth, slow reproduction, slow evolution, slow locomotion, slow reactions, slow thoughts. Basically their entire clocks were slowed down. And so they evolved the ability to pilfer genetic material to catch up to their faster cousins near the vents.
But then they started acquiring the fancy toys. How did their 'slow' nature interact with their new ability to generate light signals? When one of their nodes received light from surrounding nodes, did it take fucking forever to process the information before broadcasting its own light to the nodes it shared dendrite analogs with? Wouldn't this present a challenge to the emergence of the overall consciousness? I usually imagine their consciousness, indeed any consciousness, as a sort of a symphony that must be time limited between one note and the next. Otherwise it's just keys being played in sequence and not music, or a bunch of lights on a timer and not a moving picture.
Did they carry this slowness with them when they went post biological? Like how uploaded humans in fiction mostly choose human/humanoid avatars? A relic of times past that they can't help but keep? We know by the time the humans stumble onto them they are at least able to count a hundred and thirteen events in one second. But what if their clocks don't tick that much faster than that? What if they are only able to squeeze an eternity out of a day and not a second as we imagine emulated minds to be able to do? On any given power source, you can run some emulated minds very fast, or you can run a fuckton of them at a normal pace. Maybe the romans maximized on emulated nodes. Maybe they saw speed as a luxury to be traded for more of them. Maybe there is a limit on how fast you can run emulated minds in the Expanse universe. Maybe the energy-time uncertainty principle means you get a lot of noise if you try to orchestrate quantum interactions too fast and since consciousness is quantum in this verse all your minds die or something (Probably bullshite physics here but I'm not a physicist, put down the pitchforks please).
The entire reason this issue is nagging away at my brain is because the timeline of the roman-goth encounter seems weird to me. Why does the star killer capability of the slow zone station take so damn long to charge and fire? Where did the Romans get the time to build a black hole shotgun when the goths were shutting down systems left and right. Given how slowly we see the star killer capability of the slow zone station charge up before firing, how did the Romans get the time to fire and kill off entire systems as the goths were attacking them? We've seen the goths sterilize systems in an instant. How did the Romans get the time to do anything??
Tl,dr: The timeline of the Roman-Goth conflict made me suspect that the Romans somehow never managed to escape their slow life era. I'm very confused, send help!

I feel like an idiot for posting this on Reddit but I don't really feel comfortable venting about this with friends, so here we are!
(21F) It's been two years since I broke up with my ex boyfriend. It was a really healthy relationship and we remain really close friends, it just didn't make sense to me to keep up with it anymore.
Well, I'm a 21 year old girl, and since that breakup my social life hasn't been all that interesting really. I'm a 4th year law student and college ended up being not all that exciting, and even tough I've got to meet my amazing group of friends, I didn't really relate to anyone else. Therefore, this time when you're supposed to meet lots of people and broaden your horizons ended up stagnating a bit for me.
I consider myself an easy going person, I've never in my life find it hard to make friends or getting to know people. It's just that I haven't got many chances to. I spend most my time with my friends I already know or end up meeting people at parties who I don't talk to ever again, and being still in college doesn't give me much time for new activities. Romantic-wise, I've never been the type that cares too much (or even at all) to be in a relationship, and I never really liked the idea of having to chase anything. I thrive on my own most of the time, and whatever happens, happens. But like anyone else, I sometimes miss the occasional flirt and whatever comes with it haha. Intimacy in geral, or just having fun. More than the horny!!!! aspect of it, I really do miss getting to make friends and talk to somebody new.
Well, as I've stated before, I think I'm really easy to talk to, overall funny and outgoing. Charming in a good day, perhaps haha. About my looks, well I wouldn't say I'm stunning but I'm not very insecure, or at least I don't let it get to my head very often. Maybe not the type you'd give a second look or flirt on the subway - unless I'm reading some cool book or something haha - but maybe buy me a drink in the night if we're having a good time lol. I'm usually very friendly with anyone I meet so I don't even know how people make the jump to flirtation these days...
Back to the dating apps: as we've seen here, I'm stagnant. Not even my social media does wonders for me anymore since I've had the stupid idea of soft blocking almost everyone when I've gotten out of high school (so real to be fair), so most of my followers are people I actually know or work with today. There's always a random guy out of nowhere but you know, no one interesting enough !!
That being said, should I overcome my fear of dating apps? I'm NOT gonna lie to you, to this very day I've always been a bit prejudiced about it. Not judgemental of people who use them at all, I just never thought I'd be into it because I don't think that's the coolest way to say I've met a significant other haha. I mean, my future boyfriend can be using a dating app right now, but he surely won't find me in one. At least that's how I like to put it.
Still, I'm reluctant. My brain tells me not to do it, but at the same time my heart is telling me to do so for the plot. I really hate the idea of having to create a profile that appeals to anyone, plus the dynamic of maybe not finding matches???? I don't have many self esteem issues but idk how that would affect me in the long run. Plus, maybe this might sound wrong, but given the fact that I study law people on my field of study expect some odd seriousness of their employees, and as common as they are there's still many preconceptions about dating apps within these firms. I mean, I already hold the weight of my digital footprint being goofy on twitter haha
WELL I don't know what to expect of this! But it's my first post on Reddit so there's that! I ended up writing a lot more than I intended so feel free to engage and talk to me. Or even to call me an idiot. It's late in the night in here and I feel like oversharing SO there's that freedom of opinating about strangers lives on the internet lol
Anyway thanks in advance, and I apologize for any mistake since english ain't my first language!