Dropout uses Vimeo?

Ah. Thanks for the target audience explanation.

What I mean with Mastodon is that, immediately after “Social networking that’s not for sale”, you see more sentences: “Your home feed should be filled with what matters to you most, not what a corporation thinks you should see. Radically different social media, back in the hands of the people.”

I think the technical details, such as open source and federation are not going to click with people who don’t know those ideas. However, open source and federation can create something that, for those people, is valuable.

So the question is: what does Lemmy offer that clicks with people who don’t know technical details?

This is up for discussion, of course. But I’d argue there’s “freedom”, “choice”, “human (and not corporate) communities”, “made for people, not for profits”…

That leads me to my suggestion:

A discussion platform that is truly free. You choose your feed, not a corporation. You choose where to set up your account, not a corporation. You choose what communities to be a part of, not a corporation.

or

A discussion platform that is truly free. You choose your feed. You choose where to set up your account. You choose what communities to be a part of. You choose, not a corporation

The bolded text is like Mastodon’s first sentence. The rest of the text is like Mastodon’s other sentences.

The technical details can be explained later in the page, just like Mastodon does it.

This totally happens in code where functions have plenty of side effects. And thats why functional programming can lead to fearless refactoring!

I’d love to edit my previous post but I don’t wanna spam you.

As to target audiences, I think it could be helpful to specify the personas that we’re building the sentences for. Does the persona know what the Fediverse is? Do they know what enshittification is? Do they know what open source is? Do they have strong opinions about surveillance capitalism (even if they don’t know the word for it)? Or are they clueless regarding all of these topics?

My suggestion assumes some knowledge of these topics. To be clear, if I’d single out a suggestion of mine, it’d be:

A discussion platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.

The best sentence will depend on the target audience. Is there a way to know who would be that audience?

Also, responding more directly to your question, I’ve got a frame challenge: What about two or three short sentences, like what Mastodon does?

A platform that is truly democratic. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.

A platform where you’re truly free. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.

A platform that can’t enshittify. You choose your feed. You choose where to host your account.

That third one I like, because it’s a differentiator that Lemmy has in comparison with ButterflyX or whatever Jack the Twitter Guy is working on right now; Lemmy is not at risk of enshitifying, unlike ButterflyX.

Also, if it’s important to differentiate Lemmy from Mastodon or other Fediverse platforms, the sentences could start with “A discussion platform”.

Also, here’s a take where I tried to make no reference to electronics:

A bustling room filled with tables, each filled with people talking about what they find interesting, where the conversation topics are always chosen by the table and always changing, and where you’re free to set up your own tables with your own topics.

or, more succinctly,

A bustling room filled with tables, where each table is filled with people talking about what they find interesting, a room where you’re free to set up your own tables with your own topics.

Also, I just realized that every time that I edit this post you get notified becase I @ed you. Sorry!

And, finally, happy cake day, @nutomic@lemmy.ml!

That’s alright. I understand that explaining takes time and energy. That time and energy is something I often choose to spend, but I also sometimes choose not to. I would ask you why you want to stop explaining things, but that would, ironically, require you to explain things. I’m not saying this ironically or sarcastically: I hope you can be understood easily!

To understand what you mean, could you rephrase or explain your ideas? I read your post and couldn’t understand what you meant.

Where to start? I’m not sure which option is the most user-friendly, but I have really liked using Typst. I’ve come to use it for all kinds of things, from reports at work to my CV as well as my ongoing TTRPG campaign.

To git gud with Typst, I started by reading the tutorial. While reading, I was thinking visibly (look up Project Zero and Visible Thinking Routines) about it. It took a couple of days of reading and thinking visibly and practicing for me to feel that I could use Typst quickly.

Are the documents as pretty as Word? I’d say so. I redid my CV with Typst and I think it’s the prettiest CV I’ve ever made. Additionally, my TTRPG dungeon keys are prettier than when I used Libre Office (in part because it’s easier to format stuff, so I format more than before).

Are there options for fonts and styles? Absolutely! Fonts are very easy to change. As to styles, it requires a bit of learning, but now I apply styles with functions. I use #set, #show, and custom functions to apply styles. For example, boxed text can be considered a style, and I made a custom function called boxed_text() that I just pass my text to. It takes a bit of setup, but for me it’s ridiculously easy to just pass my text to boxed_text() instead of clicking on stuff to apply styles. If you’re curious about my boxed_text() function, you can check it out here https://lemmy.ml/post/37628567/21680638

Edit: fixed the link

Totally! I really like that the article explains that Trump doesn’t lie, but he bullshits. Apparently the reason is that lying means the liar knows what’s true, while a bullshitter doesn’t care if the bullshit is true or false. This is one of the reasons Trump is unique.

Oooooh. Those boxes would be useful. Thanks for taking the time to document them!

Huh. Interesting. It seems like you’re fully digital, then. Maybe I should try that sometime!

It sounds like you’ve got a comprehensive solution!

Do you prepare scenarios by exporting to PDFs? I ask because I tried using regular Markdown for my sessions but it didn’t work. I couldn’t get nice boxed text nor could I define when I wanted a page break. None of the Markdown solutions seemed as elegant as Quarto (which I know from learning to use R) and Typst (which seems a little simpler than Quarto). Maybe there are solutions that I missed.

I ask that, but that doesn’t mean that Markdown isn’t a great solution to many problems! In fact, my daily note-taking is done in Markdown!

In case you’re curious, here are my Typst settings. I write them at the top of every new scenario I build.

#set text(font: "Atkinson Hyperlegible Next")

#let title = [The Name of This New Scenario lol]

#set page(
    header: align(right + horizon, title)
)

#set pagebreak(weak: true)

#let box_text(content) = block(
  stroke: 1pt + black, 
  inset: 10pt,
  radius: 4pt,
  width: 100%,
  content
)

#show "GM Note": phrase => strong(phrase)

Ah. Thanks for the recommendation. I looked it up and the noun definition was “a substance obtained by a chemical process or producing a chemical effect”. So things like sucrose in a banana, protein in eggs, and even fiber in vegetables are all chemical.

I understand that you’re trying to make the point that Nutella is not healthy, and I genuinely think you can make an effective argument for that (in fact, I agree with you!). In particular, I think you can argue with evidence-based arguments. However, do you think accusing Nutella of being made of chemicals (when practically everything in this universe —including healthy food— is made of chemicals) is the best way of making an evidence-based argument?

Just to understand better what you’re saying, what does the word “chemical” mean?

• I’ve learned plenty of words.
• I’ve learned to describe spaces and objects better.
• I’ve learned how to have conversations about expectations in a friend group.
• I’ve learned that some things need hard prep. Others can be improvised.

How did those ideas relate for you:

• satanism
• authority
• teaching?

In other words, can you elaborate?

Gotcha.

I see what you mean. Apocalypse World is not on the side of brutally hard or the side of trivially easy; it sits in the middle, in “yes, but”. Some games make certain things impossible (“No, you can’t jump to the moon”). Other games make things trivial (“Sure, use your ‘ultra high jump’ ability”). In other games, the difference between “you can’t” and “sure” is just your character’s level.

This means that, no matter how weak or strong your character is, you can try anything. This does not mean, however, that all characters in Apocalypse World are equally competent. In Apocalypse World, an incompetent character usually has a -2 stat, while a very competent character has a +3 stat. The difference between -2 and +3 is quite massive, even if it doesn’t seem at first.

You can be sure of it by checking out this graph that Vincent Baker, the creator of Apocalypse World, made:

Notice that your odds of a strong hit go from 5% to 55%. Your odds of at least a weak hit go from 30% to 90%. If a teacher saw their student go from 30% to 90%, they’d think the student changed, grew, became more competent.

Well, but aren’t other games more dramatic in their character stat growth? Aren’t other games in the extremes of brutally hard or trivially easy? Probably, but I’m not sure that this is a bug. To me, it’s a feature.

My players can try anything. They want to burn the whole realm in a single Move? They do it. And I get to think about how that changes the world. I get to think about how the fire destroyed their own home. I get to think about what new societies arise from the ashes. I get to think about how the players’ NPC friends are now plotting against them. In other words, the fact that players can try anything at all makes the game very interesting to me and to my friends. I never tell them “nope, you can’t”. I also never tell them “obviously you can”. Instead, they can always genuinely try. And the world constantly adapts. There is no status quo. That’s the feature, not the bug.

If players can try anything, how come their character sheets are so over-constrained? This is a good point. I agree with you. If you dislike the character sheets in Apocalypse World, it’s kind of a bummer. However, the way that Apocalypse World does characters is decidedly not how all PbtA games do characters. Vincent Baker himself has said that his character playbooks are a sort of historical accident and that other PbtA games could be entirely different (1). And, indeed, there are PbtA games that are entirely different.

Take Ironsworn or Starforged. Both of those games are Powered by the Apocalypse and have an explosion of options for character creation. During character creation, you’re given a deck of cards, and you get to pick three of them for your character. Each card represents a special feat, ability, companion, tool, magic, vehicle, or other options. In Ironsworn there are 75 assets, which gives you 405,150 different combinations for your character. In Starforged there are 87 assets, which gives you 635,970 different combinations for your character.

How does Daggerheart fare in this regard? Does it over-constrain characters? In short, it’s nowhere close to Apocalypse World. Yes, it doesn’t have Ironsworn and Starforged’s explosion of options. However, they do have a card system in which you can choose your character’s ancestry and community. You also choose different cards every time you level up, cards that are specific to your class. This is definitely not an over-constraining game.

So, to recap, the difference between a competent Apocalypse World character and an incompetent one is great. However, players can still always succeed or always fail, which I think is not a bug, but a feature; the world is always adapting to what players do! Finally, Daggerheart is nowhere close to Apocalypse World in terms of over-constraining characters.

(1) Here Vincent Baker shows that Playbooks are even optional to the Apocalypse World model.

Totally valid. I assume you like combat simulators like Dungeons and Dragons. Is that the case? If not, what do you dislike about PbtA?

Huh. Thanks for sharing. I’m totally up for critically evaluating Critical Role and Daggerheart.

I do agree that Critical Role’s play style was a bit like a square peg in a round hole. Other games could’ve been more appropriate for them. Arguably a more appropriate game for them is Daggerheart.

As to not letting your personal feelings about Critical Role cloud my judgement, thanks for caring about not biasing me. At the same time, I’m sure you have good reasons to be critical of Daggerheart. Understanding why we say what we say sounds like a good plan, and I’m curious to hear what you think:

What is it about Daggerheart that makes you think it’s nothing more than a platform to continue their failing brand?