Your life up until now is meaningless. You can be born again.

How would you define dialectics?

I wash one. I realize it’s the one I had popcorn in. I note I should clean that, too, later.

I think your friend had probably learned that if she just notes to clean it later, she will forget and it’ll never happen. I feel like there’s a sense of urgency you learn to develop, that the longer you wait between thinking of a task and completing the task, the more likely it is that the task will simply never get done, so you wind up jumping from task to task as you think of them.

instead of bickering over why people are at the queer event and not a workers event

I see a lot of people in the thread interpreting OPs statements this way, but that just doesn’t seem like what they’re saying at all. They didn’t say anything negative about queer events, and they’re not asking why people are at them, or implying that those events should be less popular. They’re asking why workers rights events aren’t even more popular, considering their relevance to the vast majority of the population.

Me too, but I don’t really play a lot of video games, so I could list every game I’ve ever played pretty quickly.

He not only nailed it so hard no one else can play the role, he nailed it so hard he became synonymous with the role.

I’d wager that if I actually kept every tab I opened to get to later since like, StumbleUpon, and actually resolved to get to them, that’d be it for me. I would probably have enough content to occupy the rest of my natural life without any leftover free time.

That’s what I meant by “false positives”. They are measuring responses related to lying, but not exclusively and not reliably.

many graphs of sensors output not having anything to do with honest or dishonest responses.

Well, they sense physiological changes associated with dishonesty (stress/nervousness). The problem is they can’t pick up false positives (someone being honest despite being nervous under interrogation) or false negatives (someone who can remain totally unfazed while being dishonest).

So while technically they do have something to do with honest/dishonest responses, it’s nowhere near a direct enough correlation to be useful for the purpose.

You could do that, but then you have players who don’t really know what their Traits do. My preferred method is to sit down with each player with GCS open and go through step by step: Basic Attributes, Advantages central to their character concept, Skills central to their character concept, then fill in some extras until they run out of points. I’m comfortable enough with the major options to walk them through it pretty quickly, although unless someone has a very clear idea of what they want to play, that can still take well over half an hour.

Choosing everything forces the player to at least be aware of what abilities they have. With templates, they still need to familiarize themselves with the included Traits, and then inevitably fiddle with things a bit to get closer to their vision. Accounting for that, I don’t think they have much time unless you’re playing a very generic character and rely on the GM to keep track of your abilities.

Exactly. I usually eyeball modifiers.

Bold of you to assume the mistakes my printer makes are in any way consistent.

Bold of you to assume my prints come out the way they’re supposed to.

Online I guess if you’re into VTT. You could maybe poke around at a game shop, I’ve even seen bulletin boards in some where you can post flyers, some people use that to find a group.

Very true. If you want to just plug and play, and get going in 15 minutes without thinking about it too much, D&D is fine. When you start bumping against its limitations, like wanting to take multiple subclasses, it’s time to consider a system with more freedom.

If you don’t mind indulging me, could you elaborate on what you like better about GURPS? I tried to get into it, but was quickly put off by its extreme granularity.

Gladly, any chance I can get, tbh. The base system is very simple: for anything you’re trying to do, the GM determines what the relevant skill is, and what situational modifiers make that attempt easier or more difficult, roll 3d6 ≤ skill level ± modifiers. With the exception of rolling damage and a handful of other situational things (Reaction, Self Control, etc.), basically everything you do mechanically will be that same Success Roll (3d6 ≤ Skill Level ± Modifiers). All the granularity comes down to determining your Skill Level and relevant Modifiers.

The point buy character creation is awesome, it’s really it’s own mini-game. You have total control over what you’re able to do, and good at (within the confines of your specific setting). I got fed up with trying to build a character concepts within the D&D creation options. It got to where I was cobbling together races and classes and subclasses and feats and multiclass dips to try to approximate an idea, picking up all sorts of baggage I was never going to use and only halfway getting to what I envisioned, and even then only by the grace of a tolerant DM.

I like making exactly the character I want, and not worrying that it’s going to be some half-baked novelty or an overpowered munchkin. I got bored making D&D characters after like 7 or 8; they’re all either the same basic mechanic build with a personality swap, or basically useless in play outside very specific conditions.

The foreword also said something along the lines of, “here’s the most important rules, you can ignore the rest of this book and still play GURPS just fine” …but that sounds like the same thing you’re complaining about with D&D?

The difference is: D&D touches vaguely on a subject, or doesn’t touch on it at all, and tells you to fill in the rest ; GURPS gives you more options than you can ever use, and tells you to pick and choose whatever helps you in your story and setting. When considering value as a game system, I much prefer being given a selection to choose from than bare bones that I’m forced to expand on.

Again, it comes down to design, balance, and playtesting. GURPS gives you balanced mechanics to incorporate as you please, D&D forces you to come up with adjudication on the spot and pray that it doesn’t break anything. It’s the difference between being handed a tub of Lego, and a tub of clay.

I know you’re frustrated that it’s buried in a supplemental text rather than the core rulebook, but I don’t know. Should the PHB also have the specific rules for large-scale army battles? Maritime navigation? How to play dragon chess? There’s only so much you can fit into the basic rulebook…

Where do you find those rules in D&D? A bit in Xanathar, a bit in Tasha, a bit in Volo, a bit in Saltmarsh, a bit in SCAG, more bits sprinkled around.

GURPS has plenty of supplementals, but the organization and density of content is miles better. In GURPS, the basic stuff to build most characters, and the core mechanics are in Basic Set Characters. The advanced mechanics are in Basic Set Campaigns. The advanced rules for magic are in Magic. The advanced rules for melee combat are in Martial Arts. The rules for space stuff are in Space. The rules for sci-fi technology are in Hi-Tech. There are dozens of short supplementals for Mass Combat or Social Engineering or Psionic Powers. Everything is modular, indexed, and extensively cross-referenced.

If I want to use a special mechanic, I don’t have to guess where it is and go digging. I go to the book that makes sense and check the contents or index, and I can find an obscure rule within a minute. If a mechanic interacts with another, it’ll tell me.

Personally, I love the granularity. For as much as D&D focuses on combat, it’s so boring. Roll to attack, miss AC. Roll to attack, hit AC, roll damage. Some classes sprinkle some extra damage for certain conditions, and wizards get a little more creative utility, but otherwise that’s it. GURPS has superior mechanics for defense, grappling, targeted shots, tactical maneuvers, martial arts techniques, shock, wounds. All optional, but you do have options, and you can use that options creatively.

The main problem OP cited, not being able to multi-subclass, can’t happen because there are no classes. Choose whatever abilities and attributes suit your character concept, campaign setting, and budget. The only time it restricts you from doing something is when you try to take things that contradict each other (like being Wealthy and Dead Broke), or break the balance (like adding over 80% Limitations on a Trait to make it super cheap).

Oh yeah, Enhancements and Limitations, another awesome level or granularity that let’s you further fine tune your Traits to align exactly with your concept. Honestly, I could gush about this system all day. I could never imagine going back to 5e.

I concede that it’s pretty generic and would benefit from some refinement

That’s my point. A couple paragraphs on one page, and an addendum in another book to consider giving the player advantage and maybe an “added benefit”, again left entirely up to the DM. The Xanathar’s content is nice, if again a bit vague, assuming your DM uses it. But that’s still buried in an appendant text.

And that’s just one example. Called shots are another good example. Anything outside the narrow scope of the written rules is left up to the DM. That’s not fundamentally problematic in a ttrpg, the game master always has the final say anyway, but it’s lazy game design, and it’s only getting worse with each release. I said elsewhere that I quit D&D after buying the 5e Spelljammer set, which dumped all mechanical decisions onto individual DM decision. I don’t buy rulebooks to get permission to run my game how I want. I buy rulebooks for playtested rules.

I suppose I’m lucky enough to have enough friends into ttrpgs to build a group of players open to the system I like. I lost some who were emotionally invested in D&D, but frankly they were the least fun ones to play with (min-max munchkins and rules lawyers undercut by an unfamiliar system), so I’m not too upset about it. Plus I’ve been empowered with many more options for creative play, and blessed with players interested in creative play.

I don’t need to buy a set of books to give me permission to use my imagination, and I don’t need it’s permission to disregard rules that don’t serve my campaign, or homebrew my own. Every ruleset of every tabletop game is optional. Sure, ignoring some rules can unravel the system, but every table is free to make that choice.

I buy a set of books because I want an exhaustive set of balanced and playtested rules. I am under no obligation to use every rule, but I want to have them so I know if I choose to use them, I’m not going to break the balance.

For instance, I’ve fully moved to GURPS. It has a reputation for being complicated because there are lots of mechanics available. I ignore the vast majority of them most of the time, but when a player wants to do something out of the ordinary, I can count on having a balanced mechanic available for guidance. I don’t have to worry about being too strict, or too lenient, or inconsistent the next time the same situation arises.

5e isn’t “permissive”, it’s lazy game design. I quit after buying the Spelljammer set, which provided basically zero guidance for any of the actual spell jamming stuff. When the answer to every question is "The DM can decide to do it however they want :)”, you’re not actually releasing a game system.

Again, I don’t need to buy a book to have permission to use my imagination however I want. I buy a book to give me balanced and playtested mechanics. WotC doesn’t seem particularly interested in that.

Because 5e is a simple game made for adolescents. It’s easy to pick up, easy to build a character, and easy to run. The problem is once you start trying to do anything particularly interesting, it crumbles. It foists basically all mechanic decisions that aren’t directly related to combat onto DM adjudication, and provides very little guidance. I mean, last I checked you have the option to be proficient with various sets of craft tools, but the system doesn’t actually explain what that actually does mechanically.

If you want to make interesting character builds, you have to transition to a more detailed system. I’m partial to GURPS myself, but Pathfinder 2e is a nice middle ground of detail while still being fairly familiar to someone used to D&D.