MountingSuspicion

Yea, like I said, every table is different. I'm sure some people would love that and think it's great. Others might not. Diversity in the space is really good for the hobby in my experience.

I had something in there originally about "if she has one" but it felt charged, so I took it out. Hard agree though.

You're the one that brought up my age and what you perceived to be my life experience and then suggested I not judge people. I'm not making it about me. I'm making my position clear, since apparently it was not understood. I don't want there to be any confusion. Best of luck.

Totally understandable take. Definitely have had townspeople giving differing accounts of the beast they encountered in the woods so players aren't sure if it's a vampire or a ghost or werebeast etc so they're on their toes and keeping an eye out for anything (this is an oversimplification but you get the point).

I would never ask a player if they are averting their eyes unless I had reason to believe they would (like I said above maybe they were already warned). If they touch a poisoned object I'm not asking if their hand is gloved or if they're using a cloth. If they are doing something out of the ordinary I expect them to say as much unless it's already established that their character always wears gloves or something.

Setting the tone is important and also a good time to give them some information on the monster. If it can shoot spikes I might refer to the spikes as like the quills of a porcupine or something to try to telegraph that if it's bright enough and their skills are high enough to normally make that connection. If they misconstrue tone setting for actual information I generally do not correct them unless I think their PC would know better in which case I will sometimes outright correct them or have them roll for additional clarification. It's hard to know what their PC would actually be able to gather if they were a real person, so I try not to penalize them for what may at some point just be my failure to describe what they see as a DM.

Different play/DM styles are good though. Lets everyone find a table that's right for them.

Honestly, as a queer person, I don't know if I'd be excited for a queer tour. There's enough queer oppression day to day. I don't know if I'd be excited to hear about it on vacation too. I'm a firm believer in everything being political, but I think it's ok and probably good to take a vacation from the news every once in a while. I don't tour slave plantations when I go to Disney despite knowing FL was a slave state (I don't go to Disney or FL anymore). I feel like it's ok just to want to be for a bit.

Good on you for going though. Glad to hear it was fun!

I'm neither, but ok.

My comment acknowledged that life can be hard, but admittedly assumed that a lot of stressors are outside the home. Plenty of stressors inside the home as well of course, but I was just mentioning what my first thoughts were. I passed absolutely no judgement in my comment, to my knowledge. Please feel free to let me know what part came off as judgmental. That was not my intention.

I'm not saying my life is difficult, but just because someone is not involved in drug use doesn't mean that they've had it easy.

Every table is different but I don't think this would fly at my table. It's a little metagamey to ask unless you have reason to believe they would, so if they were told in character to look away but maybe the players themselves forgot where it's not something the PCs would forget. It feels a little adversarial. Combat is often rough to begin with and imposing disadvantage for no reason other than it punishes them for taking cues from the DM seems like it's stretching it unnecessarily. But every table really is different and it may have been super fun for everyone, I don’t know.

I had a friend ask for recommendations for prebuilts. I found one that was under budget and over spec for their needs and sent them the info. They ended up going with an overbudget one with arguably worse specs (they didn't really need the specs I was suggesting but bang for buck it made sense and was still under budget) because it had all the lights that the seller could shove in it. No real judgement if that's your style and you have the money, but it just upset me to have spent time doing research for them only to have them ignore all of that because they failed to mention that lights were important.

Iit will likely be taken out of her estate unfortunately. What a great point. As if her son hasn't lost enough.

Both good points.

They say there's been a drop off in alcohol usage and sex too if I remember correctly, so I imagine it might all be tied to less partying, and sadly somewhat indicative of more social isolation.

Narcan was also so heavily discussed that even I thought about having some on me just in case, but honestly I'm not really in any positions where I'd need it, so getting it felt like it'd be more virtue signaling than actually helping anyone lol. But I'm sure if I thought it'd ever actually come in handy that I and other people I know would have made sure to have it. I imagine people who interact with people susceptible to overdose would feel similarly.

Not sure if this is a joke, but I'm sorry if you're legitimately struggling with this.

I was figuring job loss leading to less income, plus stay at home orders leading to less ability to meet/congregate with people supplying/using, plus change in supply lines possibly leading to difficulties acquiring or at least a rise in prices. That plus a decrease in possible other stressors, time for introspection, and time to get and stay clean without concern for other priorities seemed to make it a good time to try to quit. I'm not really involved in that so I don't know though. Just speculation. I know people who quit smoking and drinking, but that's obviously very different. That was mostly because they didn't smoke/drink alone so they were able to go a bit without and decided to keep it that way.

I'm surprised there wasn't a bigger drop during Covid.