If you haven’t read it, this is explored somewhat in “DM of the Rings”: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612

… although, I myself cannot recall how they explained Gandalf’s resurrection.

Exactly. Pragmatism wins the day. Or at least it does at my table.

I’ll have to shop around for more and better tools. Thanks for reminding me that there’s a wider world out there.

But give me the nitty gritty so I can decide for myself.

This resonates with me. But I also have to give an obligatory nod to Palladium Games where the nit and grit is the entire point. If you’ve never had the pleasure, the RIFTS character sheet makes (American) taxes look easy to file by comparison. You practically need a session zero and a session zero-zero to get started.

Obligatory

The most important thing to keep in mind with celebrity actors is that they make a living pretending to be someone/something they’re not. And they’re damn good at it too.

Not to cast doubt on everyone in that profession. Rather, proceed with an abundance of skepticism when considering celebrity endorsements.

Considering that was probably penned in the late 1980’s, why isn’t that standard kit for every other system?

Still, as a DM, it’s far too tempting to give a little bit of this away and join in on the hijinks.

Me: You find yourselves in a hidden library. On one shelf you see a series of tomes named “How Not to be Seen”, volumes I-XX.

Newbie Fighter: Oh sweet, those look handy.

Seasoned Rogue: Aw fuck. NOBODY TOUCH NOTHIN’!

Ten minutes later:

It would sit well with my conscience that I likely prevented a worse fate for exponentially more people, and prevented another person from having to make a worse choice. Which they themselves would likely only make twice as worse, and so on. I could live with that.

What I’m not sure of is how I would handle being a deicision-maker N steps down the line. Being the first guy, sure. The 16th? I dunno.

2³² is roughly four billion. We’ll need one or two more doublings to get every last person alive on the tracks.

This introduces a new wrinkle in the experiment: all the switch operators are also tied to the track. Somewhere.

I’m not into feet myself, but I sort of get it. Most bodyparts that are fetishized have ways of signaling physical, mental, and sexual health. Collectively, that’s physical attraction in a nutshell. Secondary sexual characteristics are the obvious ones, but consider where a person’s mind is if they have good hair and teeth? What is suggested by nice looking skin, or have laugh lines instead of a furrowed brow? Feet - well, you have to be in pretty good health and on top of self-care to have nice looking feet. Surely, that’s gotta be meaningful to someone.

Fuck me. If that isn’t cold hard evidence of sociopathy/psychopathy, I don’t know what is. Yeah, blood and wounds can be gross, but your empathy is supposed to override that in the moment. These quotes read like there’s zero of that going on - it’s just vulgar biology to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Criticism

In 1934, Roosevelt defended himself against those critics in a “fireside chat”:

[Some] will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it ‘Fascism’, sometimes ‘Communism’, sometimes ‘Regimentation’, sometimes ‘Socialism’. But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical… Plausible self-seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of individual liberty. Answer this question out of the facts of your own life. Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or constitutional freedom of action and choice?[279]

At the same time, there was an actual (failed) attempt at a fascist coup on Roosevelt’s watch:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

The Business Plot, also called the Wall Street Putsch[1] and the White House Putsch, was a political conspiracy in 1933 in the United States to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Smedley Butler as dictator.

So, yeah. Fascists hate this stuff and will do anything to fight it, from name-calling to revolution.

TL;DR: viable last-ditch option would resemble Highlander 2 in terms of putting one corporation in charge of “protecting” the planet.

Okay, so I was keeping the idea of using deliberate “global dimming” in my back-pocket just so it wouldn’t worm it’s way through the zeitgeist. It’s a viable last-ditch option, but it comes with steep drawbacks. But since we’re here now, fuck it.

We already know that, thanks to requiring shipping vessels to use low-sulfur fuel, cloud seeding can actually reduce solar gain. The problem is that it also blocks out a lot of the light needed for photosynthesis. So this approach punches down on the environment in a completely different way. As for people, while global warming will absolutely impact agriculture, so would less sunlight.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shipping-rules-are-affecting-global-warming/

So we could just use airplanes and cloud-seeding. Or we could increase particulates in the atmosphere. Or, as Elon suggests, fly satellites to do the job. The tradeoffs here are awful: disrupt where rain happens, raise lung cancer risks globally, or catapult one man into multi-trilliionaire status while they charge every government on earth for the privilege. Plus, each of those options are more or less forever if we never get around to carbon sequestration that actually works.

We should seriously considering doing anything else first.

Edit: I know I didn’t invent this idea. Rather, I just didn’t want to add to any consensus around it.

Seriously. Why stand, miss, clean up your own piss (now or later), then repeat all that every time? Also: standing causes splashing - it NEVER all goes into the bowl.

The sheer genius of both Hades games is that dying is absolutely one of the best parts, since the hub-world is full of fun things like this.

Hypnos: My list says you got killed by a REDACTED. What’s that even mean?

A few deaths later…

Hypnos: REDACTED got you again, huh.

Portal and Portal 2.

GLaDOS’ constant mockery of your person, your ability to navigate tests, and general spite pretty much make both games. It all even manages to provide a lot of world-building without lore-dumping. 10/10, would get roasted again.

With respect to Lord Humongous, maintaining that kind of muscle-mass in the fucking apocalypse is an S-tier flex. Like, “I get access to all the best nutrition, which is in very short supply and always dwindling” kind of flex. Is it all looted, or does he eat people? Also, it takes lots of free time to spend on just working out to keep things that way. No matter how you slice it, his physique is a monument to a terrifying level of power in this scenario.

You say that, but it’s unclear if the paste works as an actual thermal junction or not.

Although it does read like peanut butter would be a better option.

Yes, and I’m sorry. I’m also right there with you.

Also, don’t forget to take your medication this evening.

You may not like it, but this is what peak performance glory looks like.

You mean, like this?