That sounds like a pacing issue. Out-of-character the group might agree that there's a desire to do side plots, but in-character a (heroic) party that is aware of a great evil is going to take actions in the interest of stopping that evil, even if they're knowingly unprepared (plucky young heroes who win against overwhelming odds are the stuff of legend, after all.) This is why it's important to keep scope small at lower levels - as tempting as it might be to daisy chain a much bigger bad to a smaller one with a cryptic note or mysterious secret symbol so that you can do an "all according to plan" speech later, if you drop a plot hook, the players will bite on it with the force of a million industrial hydraulic presses and not let go until the whole mystery is unraveled.
Also, don't pull a grey-and-black gambit on the party unless it's what the plan was all along and the party has been aggressively ignoring the other bait. As a player, one of my biggest pet peeves is catching shit for doing what I thought the DM wanted us to do with the narrative they laid out. It's right up there with a "mastermind" villain who is obviously ass-pulling contingency plans when the players do shit the DM didn't account for. Protip to anyone reading: if your villain needs to have plot armor so the plot can continue with zero hitches, they're not a very good villain, and it's not a very good plot.
You know, I used to think that about myself. I've found that I actually enjoy intermittent periods of doing things that are valuable and could be construed as work, when I'm well-rested and the impacts of trauma are minimized. But the problem is that state so rarely exists in life for so many people because we are forced to do this shit day in and day out, and they call us lazy and entitled when we no longer have the capacity to handle it. I've been in a near-continuous state of burnout for so long that I cannot imagine myself happy even if I never had to work again. My anhedonia is so bad that when I get home from work, all I do is eat and sleep, even on the weekends. I put some shit on YouTube to pass the time and I can't even remember what it is I watched, it's more or less just a grey noise generator. Deep in the back of myself I remember a person who once enjoyed things and had goals and dreams, but about the same time I start feeling like that person again, I have to go back to work, and it starts all over. This is no way to live.
Between rent increases and student loans kicking back in, my COL has increased $5000 a year, with zero commensurate increase in wages.
I've told my family not to get me anything for Christmas because I sure as hell can't reciprocate it this year. I may not even be able to afford the gas to drive there and back. But the economy is doing great, so I hear.
Motherfucking brand, you literally just underlined everything that's wrong with the world you and your ilk created, answer me honestly: Do you think a fucking snickers is going to solve that shit? Two, even, I'm feeling sporting here.
It doesn't seem too unreasonable. Based on some quick searches, bulk cheese breaks down to about $.19 a slice, two pieces of bread is about $.10, butter is wobbly here because I don't know exactly how much they'd be using, but let's say half an ounce/1 Tbsp is about $.25? Probably not a whole lot of profit after the cart and rent for the space, but you could probably get close to breaking even if you sold enough and/or had a better bulk supplier than what I can see with 5 minutes of research.
Anubis is the Egyptian god of the underworld. The legend goes that your heart is weighed against the feather of truth at the gates, and if your heart is deemed too heavy with guilt, you get devoured by Ammit.
Almost every time I say it, it means "Actually nothing but worries, but it's socially unacceptable to talk about our declining mental health and I have shit I need to get back to in order to distract myself from this hell that was created to squeeze maximum productivity out of me with minimum investment in life support, so I'm going to end this exchange by pretending everything's okay."
Eh, not very well - there's a certain je ne sais quoi that these games capture, revolving around skill allocation and character development that Skyrim doesn't have. It's exciting to become a water master in MM6 because it means being able to teleport freely between towns, or expert level spirit being able to bless the whole party at once.
I really want to see more games like Might & Magic 6-8 or Wizardry 8, in that vein of open world dungeon crawler, but not locked to a grid like M&M 1-5 or Dungeon Master 1&2 (although I do like those games, they're more well represented in the contemporary space with titles like M&M 10 or Legend of Grimrock.
Can someone explain to me why Dale Earnhardt is the face of anticonsumption/anticapitalist memes? Is there a reason, or just because it's funny to imagine a guy that literally wears his sponsors on his sleeve encouraging class solidarity?
That sounds like a pacing issue. Out-of-character the group might agree that there's a desire to do side plots, but in-character a (heroic) party that is aware of a great evil is going to take actions in the interest of stopping that evil, even if they're knowingly unprepared (plucky young heroes who win against overwhelming odds are the stuff of legend, after all.) This is why it's important to keep scope small at lower levels - as tempting as it might be to daisy chain a much bigger bad to a smaller one with a cryptic note or mysterious secret symbol so that you can do an "all according to plan" speech later, if you drop a plot hook, the players will bite on it with the force of a million industrial hydraulic presses and not let go until the whole mystery is unraveled.
Also, don't pull a grey-and-black gambit on the party unless it's what the plan was all along and the party has been aggressively ignoring the other bait. As a player, one of my biggest pet peeves is catching shit for doing what I thought the DM wanted us to do with the narrative they laid out. It's right up there with a "mastermind" villain who is obviously ass-pulling contingency plans when the players do shit the DM didn't account for. Protip to anyone reading: if your villain needs to have plot armor so the plot can continue with zero hitches, they're not a very good villain, and it's not a very good plot.