This list dates back to the mid-1990s (ah listservs and Usenet) If this admonition makes sense to you as a way to prevent the hero from succeeding, you are probably old:

"Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size."

This is fair. And ultimately I think there's enough evidence of this phenomenon that it's a damning critique of even more benign forms of social media like bsky.

But big picture, I think that pass fail social skill checks w/ situational difficulty are an unsatisfying mechanism in a way that doesn't implicate the satisfaction of other possible mechanisms. However, there is also considerable room for subjective taste.

And should empathize that live RP is a perfectly valid way to handle social (and in a silly parallel, Society for Creative Anachronism is a perfectly valid way to combat). Only dabbled in those games, bounced pretty hard off Mage mechanics when I tried to run it. (1/2)

Have you played much w/ systems that take on that problem? EG L5R operates in a more formal social structure. Burning Wheel has an elaborate RPS overarching structure that could emulate debates, many PBTA retain more agency w/ partial hits & targets picking from a list rather than being compelled.

Right, but that's also incredibly hard. Like 4th edition tried with the skill challenge mechanic and failed. I think successful social interaction systems often come from systems with tighter genre and/or setting expectations.

Legit and makes case for dishonesty. The player that's most excited about it was one of our regular GMs, and I'm definitely privileged to be at a place in my life where good GMs are the scarcest resource.

By contrast, by the end of 3.5 I had less money, but was so excited to ditch the edition.

Yeah, like one of our harder core players was super enthusiastic about it. I'm enjoying the Bastion rules as a new toy and I like the origin feats, but in many ways my experience is like the 4.5 revised core which was a smaller change with a clearer purpose.

That makes sense. Honestly, I'm old enough to have been through 3.0 to 3.5 but am hazy exactly how it went down.

In my current 5.5 I'm playing artificers w/ some switches which we did as a group. Awkward at times but doable. Hardest adaptation problem is I'd iffy 5.0 spell cards.

I guess we, collectively, are the target audience. Social groups that all know D&D but that don't have a common part of the game we're focused on that could be easily targeted by a challenger. Only works as the incumbent, and there is a real risk of going stale, but on the whole, we've liked 5.5.

This is true, but my group of experienced gamers basically sticks with it as people know the rules & there's enough there for all the members of a longstanding group. I run other stuff, but I would have a hard time finding a tighter game w/ long-term whole group appeal even if it played better.

If it feels like a series of patch notes or optional rules, then doesn't that mean that isn't a new edition? Like mostly reverse compatible seems like a fine reason to not call something a new edition.

Doesn't speak to the lack of vision or the like, just don't understand the dishonesty critique.

Do you think that nativism is a top-down phenomenon? My general take is that more bottom-up, with mixing of valuing homogeneity over economic factors & ignorant denial of the economic benefits of immigrants. We've seen a breakdown top-down cordon sanitaire but that's different than top-down driven

I think you may have said desegregating when you meant resegregating, if I understand your point correctly.

Also, at no point should we lose sight of the face that this problem could easily be solved by calling the House back into session, pass a bill for military pay, send it to the Senate, etc

Mike Johnson won't do that bc he doesn't want to seat Rep Grijalva bc she will be the final Epstein files vote