Depends on how they behave. If they get right up in my face and immediately tell me their whole life story how they're sick and hungry and have twenty children to feed, I'm usually skeptical. On the other hand, if someone is polite and especially if they ask for food instead of money, I'm more inclined to help.

Overall, I'm happy to help those who really need it but I've had too many bad experiences with people who were in it out of greed more than necessity. Prime example, some time last year I was on my way home from a vacation and had to wait at the train station for a couple of minutes when a guy came up to me and asked me for money because he was hungry. I told him I had no cash with me but I could get him a sandwich from a nearby vending machine where I can pay with my credit card. On the way to the vending machine, he asked me if something from the bakery at the other end of the station would also be okay. That was already a bit weird but okay. I left my partner and my luggage at the platform and took him to the bakery. On the way there, he pointed out that there was an ATM where I could get cash for him which I refused, then at the bakery he asked me for two of the most expensive snack they had plus something to drink, a total of over 20€. Quite the difference between that and the 4€ sandwich I had initially agreed to. The whole situation was so uncomfortable, I can't even remember what I got him in the end. And from the way he acted, I wouldn't be surprised if he just threw away the food once I was out of sight and asked the next person for money.

It's sad. There are so many people who ask for what they need and are genuinely happy when they get help and then there are greedy assholes like that guy. And because I usually can't tell the difference at a glance, I'm often overly careful and don't help even though I feel I should.

Explore stories with lower stakes that focus on different aspects of Star Wars. Not everything needs to be an epic galaxy-wide conflict that somehow includes ten OT characters as fanservice.

There are millions of planets, trillions of sentient beings, all with their own motivations and philosophies.

As controversial as Acolyte was, I really liked that it showed us force users that were neither Jedi nor Sith and how incapable the Jedi were of accepting that.

Hire Kai Patterson who did an amazing job fan-editing some of the shows into movies. He is of course still limited by the source material but especially his version of Ahsoka was a lot more enjoyable than the show.

They have been released multiple times. I‘ve had them on DVD for 15 years now.

Oh yeah, big shoutout to @elyukai@mastodon.social and the whole team for creating the best ttrpg software I‘ve ever used.

Without saying anything negative about D&D 5e, let me tell you about two of my personal favorites:

The Dark Eye

Under the name "Das Schwarze Auge", this is one of the most popular systems in Germany and has existed since the mid 80s and the latest edition has been available in English for about a decade now. There are dozens of source books and hundreds of official campaigns and standalone adventures, all set in the same world and a single ongoing canon (apart from a few early works that have been retconned). There are decades of detailed in-world history that you can use as a background for your own campaign if you want or selectively ignore if you want to focus on your own interpretation of what the world should look like.

Mechanics-wise it's a lot less board-game-like than some 70s/80s/90s systems while not going the full "storytelling first" route that many more moderns systems seem to prefer. On top of the eight basic attributes, characters can select from a pool of skills and feats that cover everything from combat to magic to social interaction to crafts and hobbies. The system focuses a lot less on combat than other high fantasy systems and it's absolutely viable to have a group of purely social-focused characters that never get into a single fight but still get to use a lot of the system's mechanics.

Overall it's relatively complex if you want to use absolutely every rule but at the same time very versatile and can be customized to your playstyle.

Opus Anima / Opus Anima Investigation

Sadly out of print and never officially translated to English so I'll focus on the one thing that works without the official setting: it's one of the simplest systems I've ever seen. It uses a pool of D2s (odd/even on D6, coins, red/black cards, whatever you have on hand) where the number of dice is determined by a basic attribute and a skill that can be combined however the situation requires. Dexterity + mechanics to build something, perception + mechanics to recognize a mechanism, knowledge + mechanics to understand the underlying principles or remember who invented something. To avoid experienced characters failing an easy check out of pure bad luck, everything over 10 dice is not rolled but gives half a success (rounded up) automatically. That's it. That's the whole system.

Barely.

We can't choose who we're related to but we can absolutely choose not to talk to them ever again.

I trusted a family member.

They promised to let me rent the house I had grown up in until I have the money to buy it. At the beginning, I was still a university student with a part-time job so this quickly ate up my savings but I figured it was worth it. Then, about a year after I had finally finished university and had started working full time, they suddenly decided to set an ultimatum of about six months for me to buy the house or leave, even threatening to hire a gardener at my cost to make the property more attractive to buyers.

I pleaded, fought, tried to get a loan but of course without any savings as security, nobody would give me one. I had to move into an apartment, that's smaller, older and more expensive than the house that had been my home for 23 years. While I'm not in debt, I still struggle to build up enough savings to get a loan for a home, even after eight years on a software engineer's salary.

I've completely cut ties with that side of the family and I still occasionally have nightmares about the whole situation.

DB: "At least we're not National Rail."

National Rail: "At least we're not Amtrak."

The emirate of Dubai a state (not a country)inside the UAE similar to how California is a state inside the USA.

Not really but we have Springer which isn’t much better

Deal with the real problem. Be honest about why people are upset. Let them actually speak their minds without judgement. Then, analyse it. Find solutions.

Exactly. The solution to people saying "Foreigners are taking our jobs" is not to outlaw saying "Foreigners are taking our jobs" (though the AfD has done enough other things that warrant a ban), it's not to get rid of foreigners, it's not even to create more jobs. It's to make sure that people have at least their most important needs (housing, food, transport, access to information, basic entertainment) covered even with a part-time job or no job at all. Instead the CDU/CSU tries to brand everyone who doesn't work 60 hours per week until they're 70 as lazy. Guess what? There are way more people out there who would like to work but can't (for whatever reason) than ones who actively try to cheat the system. And no increase of weekly working time, no mandatory Excel training for unemployed people and no right-shift of politics will solve that.

Show people that the left and center are able to provide what they need and they will have no reason to blame minorities for their problems.

Yeah, guess what? We should have banned them long before they became the "strongest opposition force in parliament". Now that they poll over 20%, of course its tricky. Who would have thought?

The Creator

Yellowjackets

Psych

Upvote: well written, adds something to the discussion

Downvote: low effort, hurtful or rage bait

I make a point of not using downvotes as an "I disagree" button. If an opinion is presented well, it may still add something to the discussion even if it doesn't match my personal preferences.

Do NOT, I repeat NOT do this. Someone very close to me did something similar and got irreversible brain damage that still shows itself years later in the form of epilepsy. Our brains are not made for that little sleep over long periods of time.

It’s easy to think that the Middle East is chaotic because of what’s going on now but the region was at peace for over 500 years under Ottoman Rule.

No doubt on that point.

But the Ottoman Empire ended a solid 30 years before Israel got established. To prevent the problems the region has now, different choices would have been necessary after WW1, not just WW2. For the purpose of a "What happens if WW2 ends differently" thread, that chance has already passed. The British Mandate has been established and there are already enough Jewish immigrants to have caused the 1936-39 Arab revolt and hundreds of thousands of Jews have already fled Europe. The Axis winning WW2 would probably put even more pressure on the Allies to let Jewish refugees live in Palestine because sending them back to Europe is not just an unattractive option, it's outright impossible.

Literally every problem in the Middle East stems from the Zionist colony established by the imperialists

The Middle East has had problems for thousands of years before the state of Israel got established. Its strategic location between Africa and Asia caused Palestine to be conquered by the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, European crusaders, Arabs again, Ottomans and the British Empire. Three major religions see Jerusalem as a sacred place and have fought wars over it.

Zionism is definitely a major reason for the problems we have in our timeline but assuming there would be no problems at all seems overly simplistic.

Also, the Axis winning the war does not guarantee that Israel won't get established. There would still be hundreds of thousands of Jews who flee from Europe and need somewhere to live. The Axis, being the cause of the problem, wouldn't be interested in solving it and the rest of the world has basically the same options as in our timeline.

The axis powers had no interest in the Middle East prior to 1939 and there’s no reason to believe they would start wars in the region if The Gulf Monarchies were willing to sell them oil.

I could very well see them trying to stay mostly neutral and selling oil to everyone. Profit is more important than ideology, especially if food and water are scarce. But even in real life, that hasn't kept superpowers from finding excuses to attack oil-rich nations.

Thanks for the nice words. My approach was to avoid speculating too much about what might happen based on someone's ideology and instead see which real life events can't happen and extrapolate from there. This makes my answers equally plausible, no matter if the Axis powers stay fascist dictatorships or if they become more democratic over time, as long as overall alliances stay roughly the same.

Another thought is that American products and culture probably are popular partly because they were winners in World War 2.

Absolutely. American soldiers being stationed all over the world was fantastic PR. Being stationed long term, they brought along much of what they were used to in the USA. Those luxuries were traded with the locals and of course, if the locals wanted to be seen as fashionable, they just had to have those things.