Any non-dummies out there willing to dummy this down for me?

If I’m picking up what was being put down, websites typically reserve a small amount of space on a hard drive for any given website to install scripts they need to function. This is done as a matter of course, and is largely the modern Internet working as intended (for better or worse). However, in this case, a compromised website could instruct my browser to reserve a gig or more of space to deploy or install this FROST script. This reports back to the attacker what programs are competing for resources on my computer, including my individual browser tabs and what sites those tabs contain. It can do this despite the location where browsers let websites install/run scripts being nominally sandboxed away from the rest of the drive. It does this by measuring the latency of certain I/O operations occurring on the drive, and feeding that information through some sort of neural network.

Assuming that is generally correct from a layman’s POV, how exactly is that latency information sufficient to determine what programs or websites I have open? Wouldn’t different models of SSD (or even different SSDs of the same type) have minor variations in performance which would make this impossible? Hell, how does the script even know that it is installed on an SSD and not an HDD?

Not saying it untrue, because obviously the folks that discovered this know a touch more about computers than me, but, if this explanation were trotted out in a thriller movie (“well, President Ryan, we know the location of the terrorists’ hideout because we were able to measure the latency of their hard drive, which revealed they were placing an Amazon order in the other tab”), I’d chalk it up to techno-babble nonsense.

I’ve sunk so many hours into Conquest campaigns in Gates of Hell. I’m always a fan of strategy games which showcase artillery, and GoH is among the best in terms of visual and audio design. Of course, it’s a little incongruous when you roll out your big guns, and see they’ve got a range max of 350 meters, but I guess concessions must be made if you’re making a tactical scale RTS.

Hazarding a guess that they feel OP is using schizo as a shorthand reference for crazy/delusional, given the context is Internet conspiracy theories. They possibly feel that it is being used as a perjorative which disrespects folks who struggle with schizophrenia. In essence, calling something you find crazy “schizo” is the same as calling something you find dumb “retarded”.

I don’t have a dog in the fight one way or the other, but, in the absence of their reply, that’s my assumption.

Another suggestion for an in-universe way to tip the scales in your players’ favor would be to invent circumstances where your players’ “quick thinking” (read as: heavily signposted narrative elements) could lead to their enemies fighting with some form of disadvantage, without necessarily requiring a good roll.

As an example, say the party have found the bad guys’ base in an industrial area of town. They’re at the Moston Molasses Market, and it’s an unseasonably warm day in the middle of winter (I don’t know, let’s call it January 15th or equivalent). When the players arrive, they immediately notice that there are these enormous liquid storage silos lining the courtyard, where several mooks are milling. Additionally, without rolling because it’s obvious, one tank is literally bursting at the seams, with these long, dark brown streaks oozing out of the rivet joints. Maybe they need to make a skill check to determine this for sure, but it’s a reasonable assumption that striking that tank will cause it to burst. Given the size of the object and the foregone conclusion that this thing is gonna burst at some point with or without getting whacked, I would not ask the players for an attack roll if they chose to utilize my signposting. Instead, auto-success, the tank bursts, a wave of molasses escapes, and now the baddies that aren’t engulfed in a semi-solid wave of sticky goop at a minimum find themselves fighting in difficult terrain.

Obviously, that’s a hyper specific example born out of reading a certain Wikipedia article earlier today, but I hope it illustrates my point. As the architect of the world, the only limit is your creativity when it comes to what challenges your party face. Maybe, before their terrible stealth roll reveals them to the trio of trolls hunting them in the woods, the party overheard two of the trolls discussing how their companion isn’t allowed to cook their meals anymore, cause they’ve both got indigestion. Uh-oh, party gets found, but two of the three enemies have a level of exhaustion (or whatever other nerf you want to slap on that simulates having bubble guts) and their heart isn’t really in this fight, so they’ll bail at the first sign of resistance. Or, if a player is attentive to your narration, they might describe how their character aims a blow right in the belly of the troll that mentioned their stomach issues. If it hits (and, honestly, if it were me, I’d grant auto-success for the player’s listening skills), the troll’s eyes go wide, and he flees on his next turn. Depending on the tone of your story, more scatological narration may be included in that action.

In short, if you’re concerned the experience of your players prevents you from just tweaking numbers from behind the screen, all you have to do is bend the world to justify your tweaks. Hell, you don’t even have to have this ready to go ahead of time. Maybe you planned to have a super easy encounter with a couple of feral wolves on the way to the next village. Nothing challenging, just a reminder that the players are in with wilderness. But, uh-oh, the dice are turning Lassie and friends into Hellhounds with a taste for PC spleen. Rather than letting the campaign end with a whimper, as the heroes of Wherever wind up as puppy chow on a random stretch of dirt track, all of a sudden, the animals cease their attack and perk up their ears. In the distance, between their ragged breaths and the sound of their heartbeat pulsing in their ears, the party hear a howl. The wolves respond in kind and melt into the woods. Maybe with a roll, maybe without, your call, the players realize that the direction of the first howl just so happened to be exactly in the direction of the village they were travelling to. DUN DUN DUNNNNN!

From the your perspective, it was a random encounter gone sideways due to poor luck, and you had to invent a deus ex machina on the fly to prevent an anti-climax. However, from the player’s perspective, you have seeded a new narrative hook without relying on dry exposition, and it’s one that they might have some personal investment in. You’re under no obligation to dissuade them of the error in their assumption. Heck, in spit-balling what could have caused the situation, they may even give you ideas for how you’re going to incorporate this new dynamic into whatever you originally had planned for them at the new village.

Idk if any of that is of any use to you, but I hope it at least gives you some ideas for levers you can pull which affect difficulty that are a little more nuanced then, “oh shit, uhhhh I guess this monster’s AC is going to be 12 for the rest of this fight”.

Trust the process, the man’s a professional.

Thanks for context. It was giving me Ugly Americans vibes, but I knew that wasn’t correct.

There is a convenience store I stop at which has a self help / religious book rack. On it, there is a copy of “The Action Bible”, and, given it’s cover, I assume this is the DMG for OPs campaign.

I don’t have time to peruse this in-depth at the moment, but, presentation-wise, this is a very nice product.

Admittedly, I’ve never played a ranger, so most of my info is second hand at best, but I’ve long heard that it could use some TLC. I had heard that Tasha’s optional rules and the 2024 update went some way towards addressing the common complaints, though clearly not far enough in this author’s opinion.

I do wonder if the denigration of the Survival / Exploration pillar of DnD has contributed to the ranger’s bad reputation among 5e players. It feels like a lot of the crunchy bits that come with wilderness exploration mechanics (travel speed, terrain type, consumable rationing, getting lost, etc) have fallen out of favor. Or, perhaps, such mechanics never been in favor with fans whose early DnD memories were Critical Role campaigns rather than filling out a map one hex grid at a time.

I don’t care to argue which style of campaign is better than the other (each has their own pros and cons), but it does seem like a table with a laissez-faire attitude towards exploration and survival doesn’t have much of a call for a ranger, unless, as OP indicated, you REALLY want to play the pet class.

I see, thanks for filling me in! I can imagine she does, she’s a dead ringer. At least at this resolution haha

Casual Trek fan checking in: is that Linda Hamilton?? I know “they were on Star Trek” is a meme, but I thought I knew most of the big names that guest starred.

I don’t know if Frank is involving others in his fetishes without their consent (not cool), or trying to make a snack of Detective Bones (also not cool). Either way, get it together, Frank.

Soo, reversing the polarity is the Starfleet version of blowing into the N64 cartridge?

For both rich atmosphere and unique game mechanics, you could do a lot worse than Return of the Obra Dinn.

If you’re unfamiliar, the presentation evokes early PC (or Mac, more specifically) black and white “1 bit” games, but real time 3d. This already is very distinctive, but the gameplay also sets it apart.

You are an insurance investigator with a magic pocket watch which allows you to travel back to the moment in time that someone expired, if you find their corpse. From these brief flashes (and by cross-referencing the ship manifest) you piece together what happened to all the crew and passengers on the ships ill-fated voyage, before it’s baffling reemergence years after the fact.

You’re the one suggesting that your lack of attraction to these character models is an objective flaw. Which is, of course, semantically silly, if nothing else. Not finding a character (or person) attractive for whatever reason is your business. Taking to the forum and yelling about androgyny being objectively unattractive (in an online space which I’d wager has a disproportionate representation of trans and NB individuals) is an interesting choice.

I’m not sure I agree with the author on every point they’ve made,but it’s an interesting take, and well-written.

Can’t speak to Mission Log, but the Nextlander Watch cast is in the midst of their Summer of Trek, and have just hit the midway point of season 2. Seems like they do a couple episodes every week. The crew is made up of former Gamespot/Giant Bomb employees (Vinny Caravella, Alex Navarro, and Brad Shoemaker), if you’re familiar with their previous work.

For some reason I always figured CCP was an independent outfit, based on how they’ve handled EVE over the years. I know there were some rumblings about the business model a few years back, but, by and large, everything seems to be done with a fairly hands off ethos.

First and foremost, I understand and share your skepticism, but I attribute it more to Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast being terrible stewards of the brand moreso than the game’s genre. They’ve proven to be anti-consumer ghouls with nearly every decision they’ve made (many of which have needed to be walked back or apologized for in the wake of massive backlash) over the past couple of years. So, in light of that context, it’s only natural to assume this game is being made to chase some “casual gamer” money, rather than passion for DnDs various settings or mechanics.

As a counterpoint to the above, however, turn based gameplay is an abstraction used to make running the game easier for DMs. In the “reality” of the game world, all of the actions taking place in a round occur roughly simultaneously within a 6 second window. While my meat-based brain can’t handle adjudicating multiple dice rolls a second, my CPU absolutely can, and therefore you could, potentially, play a highly faithful version of DnD in a real time environment if the CPU is just rolling the dice in the background. In fact, this is basically what Real Time with Pause systems offer, such as the first couple Baldur’s Gate games (or many other cRPGs which emulate those).

Furthermore, the Dark Alliance games (1 and 2, not the recent live service game which is emblematic of the exact sort of decisions by Hasbro et al which leads us both to be highly suspicious of this project) are a lot of fun despite only being tangentially related to DnD. Getting something of comparable quality (with minimal GAAS nonsense), would make me pleased as punch.

And if they’re very, very lucky, you’ll do it in that order.