All good options.

Never tried the American cheese one, but I’ll have to give it a shot now!

Glamming up cheap ramen is a joy.

I like to add butter, a slug of soy sauce and chilli sauce, spring onion and sliced chillies.

It’s not gonna win me any awards, but it’s bloody tasty.

To be fair, the referee is officiating a professional sport where you really need to be able to clearly distinguish between the legs of two people lunging quickly for the same ball with their feet.

Probably sounds silly, but when that’s what 95% of the sport revolves around, you can understand them being picky on a detail like this.

I’m sure I used to use Audacity back in the day as a free, quick and dirty editor to splice up audio tracks. I’m talking at least 10 years ago.

Had no idea it was still even a thing.

He’s a business man.

And business is goooood.

New cars are ludicrously expensive, especially EVs.

The most I can afford to spend on a car is maybe £14K, and that’s under the proviso that about £4K of that is my own money and the rest is a loan to be paid off over about 6 or 7 years.

So yeah, I’m going secondhand ICE with about 50K miles on the clock and praying it doesn’t die before the loan is paid off (and preferably longer still so I can save a bit more towards the next one).

I’m all for EVs, but they’ve got to bring the price down, and they’ve got to get the batteries to last long enough for the secondhand market to be viable.

Guess it kinda depends on what it’s made of?

Even if as a material it’s mundane, it could be worth something to the right buyer, as a natural curiosity?

Every day, the reasons to either switch to dumb devices or open-source software keep piling up.

Yep, it’s like it’s her generously compensating job compels her or something.

Who’d have thunk it?

(For real though, what did people expect her to say?)

You fools! If you die in Australia, you die in real life!

If you’re interested then you should definitely give it a shot. There’s no combat - all your “battles” are just conversations 😅

Disco Elysium is sorrrrta like that, if you squint a bit.

Not focused around being an introvert or different dialogue styles exactly, but you’re a mess of a human being and conversations can literally hurt you, as it tracks your mental health as well as physical.

You should try it if you haven’t already.

That’s John Startrek, the titular protagonist of Star Trek.

Tentacles that burst forward and slapped the shit out of enemies?

Grant us eyes, grant us eyes…

The sad part is that there’s a not insignificant number of people out there who would honestly rather embrace the human instrumentality project and never look back.

Check out Lost Mine of Phandelver: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/lmop

It’s a one-shot campaign, pretty much ready to go, to the point that I think it’s even got pre-rolled characters included.

Very little set-up required beyond the DM familiarising themself with the campaign itself, and the players reviewing their chosen character and brushing up on the core rules of the game so that they know how to actually play.

Beyond that, pretty much everything else is already taken care of, so far as I know (I’ve never played it, but I know it’s a firm favourite for beginners for these very reasons).

And as for DM experience, someone who is willing to put in the work kinda just has to bite the bullet and go for it. It’s a skill like anything else, and you only get better through practice. Start with pre-written campaigns to help keep the amount of prep required and wildly unexpected events that require lots of improv on the DM’s part to a minimum. Branch out from there into more homebrew stuff when you’re feeling ready.

Above all though, just give it a shot and see what happens. There will always be reasons not to play, but if you’ve got a group who are willing to give it a go then you’ve already overcome the biggest hurdle by far.

Being DM is a big responsibility, and being able to do it well is a real talent, but it’s one of those things that you can absolutely improve on with practice.

Players have to take some responsibility too, by getting a grip on the core rules and mechanics, dedicating time to fleshing out their characters, and committing to the role itself. They can’t rely on the DM for absolutely everything.

There are some one-shot campaigns out there which I hear are designed for beginners which would be a good place to start. In fact I’m pretty sure if you make a DnD Beyond account, you get the basic rules and a beginner campaign for free, so that would be a good resource for you.

Also, if you haven’t seen it, go check out Critical Role, starting with campaign 1. Matt Mercer is an outstanding DM and will give you a great demonstration of how to run a campaign.

I’m actually the opposite.

Wanted to play DnD for years but never really had the opportunity as I didn’t have enough friends who also wanted to play so we could get a campaign going.

We’ve got a group together last year and now manage to play about once per month.

I think I’d have still been interested in BG3 even if I didn’t have a DnD group, but I’m definitely more interested in BG3 now than I would have been because of my DnD group.

I have a very, very limited understanding of the subject, so take this with a lethal dose of salt, but I’m under the impression that the US healthcare system is an absolute minefield, and not everyone has equal access to it, even via insurance, in the ways you might otherwise typically expect.

Yeah that’s fair. For the most part we’re sticking to 5e, and the consensus is always to check the rules first when we’re unsure about something and to try and implement it as intended, so we’re not losing any of what I’d consider to be core rules, like the way movement, actions and bonus actions work during combat, or spell slots and class-specific rules etc.

It’s more of our approach to more niche elements, such as the food and water needs relevant to each creature’s size as specified in the DM’s Handbook - no one has the inclination to track our food supply and consumption to the pound per character, so we instead stock up on provisions to last X number of days, and track our usage by the day. It’s just a bit quicker and easier to manage that way, and we can still implement the same effects in the event we run out of food.