When googling to find out what a word means, try adding “define” to your search. When I Google “define offsite” it works as intended.

Honestly even if everyone agreed to a linear story, they can jump the rails without even knowing unless you have clear and explicit communication. DMs should be willing to say “hey, you can do this, but just so you know I never considered this action and might need to make up some nonsense on the fly or take a break to do some new prep” if they think it’s necessary. Clear communication beats hiding behind the curtain for the sake of immersion every time.

I was a player in a campaign a while back where this basically happened - we all knew the DM had plans and thought we were following them, but he revealed at the end that pretty much the last half of the campaign had been panicked improvisation of material that he wasn’t happy with, because at one point the NPCs we’d been traveling with got on a boat to a new continent and invited us along, and in absence of other clear plot hooks we said yes. Apparently all the prep was on the previous continent and he riffed a ton of interactionless filler descriptions, a random dungeon, and a half-baked new plot, rather than saying “you can go with them but to be clear you’d be leaving my prep”. In our particular group’s case, we would have happily changed our mind on that basis, but even if we’d gotten on the boat we would have been in a position to understand and enjoy the new adventure better knowing that everyone (including the DM) was venturing into the unknown together.

this improved my mental health

got any pictures of turtles wearing ferretnecks?

Buying sold software.

Well you can start here, then spend a few decades reading and thinking about it, and get back to us when you’ve figured it out

The following year she was exiled to Mars, where she grew an extra boob

maybe it should be 1d2 then - can only deal 4 points of damage on a crit

He’s talking about the belgariad/malloreon, by David Eddings. It seems like he may not have read the second paragraph mentioning the death gate cycle, hence the confusion.

The Belgariad is a series of 5 books, and the Malloreon is a sequel series which is also 5 books.

This stuff is generally archived and indexed elsewhere, that’s just where the main request threads are

Google “da archive” and be prepared for a rabbit hole of archived 4chan threads and indexes that probably have whatever games you’re looking for if you’re willing to dig long enough

deforestation

I actually just read it for the first time in the past few days too. After all the hype, I was a bit let down although I still found it somewhat engaging. Its real strength is the dreamlike style, although that often seemed conscious and artificial - I occasionally became very aware that I was reading something the author had intentionally crafted to be stylistic, which took me out of the experience. I was surprised by how little happened over the course of the book, how little characterization there was (apart from the main character, largely fleshed out through constant flashbacks rather than a sense of her personality), and how flat the dialogue was. The way of alluding to the indescribable and incomprehensible was enjoyable, but nothing new. I’ll still read the next two though (already started the second).

I also found their mind-control depiction of hypnosis to be a bit unrealistic for my liking. I know it’s a book about reality warping madness, but it seemed like everything outside of Area X was supposed to be essentially present day reality, which the hypnosis isn’t.

Talking to people and examining writing will usually drop references to a couple of other places to explore, or to unanswered questions that are worth looking into. Even if they seem minor, these almost inevitably lead to putting together pieces of the larger story, regardless of which pieces you start with. I don’t specifically remember what whistling guy talks about, but it sounds like that’s the only potential lead you’ve found so far. It’s certainly possible to make progress without ever talking to him, via all kinds of things that can be independently stumbled on, but if you haven’t found anything else I bet revisiting his dialogue will give you an idea on where to search next.

(Okay, I checked the wiki and can confirm that, while Esker is not the richest source of new options in the game, his dialogue does include instructions that lead to new threads for you to pull on)

Where have you visited so far? Usually I’d think you’ve encountered something other than the ship within a few hours, and most of the things you can encounter should give you ideas as to what else to explore. Have you literally only floated around in the ship, or is that a way of saying that the things you’ve found aren’t interesting to you?

because they do not wish to be clobbered

deleted by creator

Running for office and voting are unrelated things with separate criteria. You can be president if you are a natural born citizen over 35 who has lived in the US for at least 14 years.

You might have been thinking that losing voting rights entails losing citizenship, but that is not the case.

deleted by creator

deleted by creator