“You are using Bonetti’s Defense against me, ah?”

Boring possibility: the DM thinks halflings and gnomes are largely redundant, and picked one to ban.

Or the one shot involves outsiders getting involved with a halfling community in trouble!

Kender, who were similar to halflings and I think are now a variant, were notorious for this. Their schtick is that they “borrow” things from their party members, not understanding that it’s theft. It gave assholes license to be assholes under the guise of roleplay, until the table inevitably needs a talk.

If the players are demanding wild results, especially if they’re the kind to roll unprompted, then sure.

But in my experience, it’s usually just a little flourish or a small bonus, which I think is fine.

And if the issue is that a nat 20 doesn’t guarantee success, technically, sure, but I’d be more annoyed being asked to make a pointless roll. I know there are reasons, like a hidden target number, or other characters being able to do it, but in general, I’d rather just hear “no” than go through a pointless check.

Let’s also throw in being a creep.

He provided a song for the 2001 animated film Osmosis Jones. This is an animated, family-friendly buddy-cop movie about a white blood cell and a cold pill teaming up to take down a virus. In the song, “Cool, Daddy Cool,” he explicitly states his attraction to underage girls and his fondness for statutory rape.

Young ladies, young ladies, I like 'em underage see

Some say that’s statutory (But I say it’s mandatory)

Like others have said, the rules are… bad. Especially the latest edition. A couple of the older editions are “favorites,” but still mixed bags, and lots of people just take the setting and use it in another system entirely.

There’s a Shadowrun actual play podcast called NeoScum that I loved (now concluded), and it began with “It’s like D&D mixed with Bladerunner!” and ended with “Fuck this, fuck Shadowrun, the universe rearranges itself so we can play a different game.” They even had a goofy recurring bit they would do whenever they had to stop play to look up rules or calculate something, which happened constantly. It’s also not a player issue, since they’ve switched to Call of Cthulhu for another story (Gutter) and just don’t have that problem.

Nobody hates Shadowrun more than the people who love Shadowrun. :P

He never actually apologized. He released a video saying he expressed himself poorly or whatever, then took it down anyway. He never said all the racist points he made were wrong.

It’s bad enough being one of those states now, and I’m in one of the good ones.

I’m annoyed that I expect Hollywood executive, as always, will take the wrong lesson from it. They’ll see it underperformed and think people don’t want a D&D movie, rather than that they shouldn’t have released it between John Wick and Mario.

My theory is that having a horny bard in the party is pretty common, but it depends on how frequently and how (ahem) enthusiastically those scenes get roleplayed. :P

I played the heck out of NWN when I was a teenager!

…by which I mean I was excited by the character options, so I ended up restarting it over and over again. I’ve done the Waterdhavian Creatures quest so many times I burnt out. :P

I should go back and actually beat the game.

My favorite was death panels.

“The government is going to decide who lives and dies by gatekeeping access to healthcare!” Motherfucker, that’s what insurance does now. The potential failures of a collectivized system are treated with more scrutiny than capitalism working as intended.

I’ve made a habit of saying “Look, [city] was a powderkeg ready to go off before we even got there.” It’s come up in multiple campaigns.

It’s bending the rules, since it’s a camping meal, but I have made it at home, too, since it makes a great depression meal. I got it from backpackers, who I’m pretty sure got it from prison inmates:

The Ramen Bomb.

Cook a crushed up packet of instant ramen noodles, maybe with a little more water than usual. Add like half a packet of instant mashed potatoes. You can also add a protein, like… chopped up Spam. Maybe some hot sauce or other fixings if you’re feeling fancy.

I hated how much I enjoyed it. Granted, that was when I was really tired and hungry, but that hit the spot.

Also, I’ve heard meals like the ones in this thread affectionately referred to as “glop,” by a fellow glop-enjoyer.

Minus the egg, that’s also a popular backpacking meal.

Personally, I also like genericizing D&D.

It’s a shorthand for folks outside or new to the hobby, it skips a hurdle to talk to people about other RPGs with those people, and it weakens the brand identity. Considering how much D&D has coasted on brand identity as the game suffered, I’m all for that.

I’m less likely to do it places like here, because it causes more confusion, but still. It’s fun to say, “Pathfinder is a great way to play D&D.” :P

FUN FACT: Five Justices of the Supreme Court were appointed by presidents who were inaugurated despite losing the popular vote! That’s a full majority! And purely by coincidence, all of them are Republicans! :D

…alright, obviously it’s not fun. I can’t believe the audacity some people have to act surprised and offended when people say the Court is illegitimate.

Oh, another one: anti-vaccination was pushed by health insurance companies to dampen public perception of government-run healthcare.

Vaccine development and implementation fucking worked. If people were happy with the results, they might end up swayed towards publicly-funded healthcare. So… put a lid on that by whipping up a bunch of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Some folks will no longer see the vaccination programs as successful efforts to protect public health, but as a conspiracy to… do something. And instead of pointing to it as an example of a public healthcare program, you’ve first got to spend time defending evidence-based medicine, which takes up so much fucking time and energy, and ultimately won’t convince people who bored too deeply into that alternate-reality tunnel.

It turned a public health initiative into a fucking tar pit, and now the once-free vaccinations cost over a hundred bucks if you don’t have insurance.

Paper straws were pushed by big corporate polluters to build a negative association with environmentalism.

Plastic straws are single-use plastics, but seem unexceptional by those standards. It’s almost a meme that they’re being singled out like they’re the single greatest source of plastic waste, or uniquely damaging to ocean life.

On top of that, there are way better ways of reducing straw usage. I’ve used bioplastics that seemed way better. You could redesign the lids. You can do the plastic bag thing and charge people a nickel for a straw or whatever. Hell, you could just not give straws with every drink, and plenty of people will just drink from their cups and glasses. Instead, we get paper straws, something that is so obviously a bad idea it sounds like a joke, or a metaphor for a useless invention. Often served with cups and lids made entirely out of plastic.

So you get a bunch of people who have their drinks kind of ruined by a frustrating straw. It’s a small thing, but it’s just a little nudge away from environmentalism. You build an association with disappointment and inconvenience. Maybe it doesn’t cause a big sway, but it makes people maybe a little more anti-environmentalist than they already were, or just less passionate about environmentalism.