Yeah, maybe there were some federation issues or something with a particular instance or two. I think Lemmy reaches out on demand to cache the thumbnail the first time it’s requested, but posts get federated over independently.

So if no one has viewed a post in the UI that’s been federated over, and the instance and ours developed communication issues between then, it’s possible that it fails to grab the thumbnail when someone is browsing in the UI

I’m not seeing that, I appear to see thumbnails and previews. Is this still happening for you? It could be having issues with specific instances if there’s federation issues

Yeah, we have a set day and time, and will only reconsider if 2+ people are missing

So my immediate thought given this context would be to make the new strain/miracle drug/whatever be something that combats the existing evil virus as a counteragent. So it would provide some amount of resistance/immunity to it, but i like the idea of a (probably unknown) drawback. Something like cordyceps maybe that slowly takes over and/or controls the person like you mentioned.

This could easily be told to the players through the NPC you mentioned who has control of the new strain/drug; he can slowly become more erratic/out of control, and his actions can start to get more suspect (along with any potential physical signs).

So basic idea for a campaign would be:

• Players run into NPC that has new miracle drug that provides resistance/immunity to super evil virus
• NPC is being hunted by the AI because of it
• Players try to protect and help NPC get to somewhere safe to begin process of creating/manufacturing/growing new drug at scale (current supply must be protected because it’s so low, so player’s can’t have any, but they know the NPC has tried it on himself)
• Over their time with the NPC, his motivation and actions begin to turn more sinister as the effects of the drug set in
• Player’s need to eventually make a choice as to if the current situation with the virus or the new threat from the miracle drug is the lesser evil.

What, exactly are you trying to replicate from the show? The miraculous super drug the powers-that-be despise? The plot premise of running from the authorities with a secret? The main character himself? All of it? Something else? Depending on what aspects you like, you can do different things for your game (fyi I know little about EP specifically, but translating plot into games can be universal).

well, to be fair, almost no one used counterspells back then because of the many failure points, clunkiness, and the high chance of it being a complete waste of your turn. Better to just cast your own fireball first.

Thats pretty similar to what 3e (and iirc older) counterspell did. You had to cast the same spell in reverse to counter a spell. So to counter spell a fireball, you had to have a fireball prepared and “counterspell cast” your fireball. That said, there was some action economy problems in 3e that made it not worth it (you had to use an action to ‘ready’ a counterspell on a specific target, when the target cast a spell, you had to roll to identify the spell, and if they cast a spell you didnt know or have prepared, you were out of luck)

Looks like it expired last month so they had a 1 month grace period

yeah, i think that’s actually a setting on the lemmy side, you can restrict the size of uploads to prevent abuse and such. We’re using whatever the default is, i’ve never changed it.

Actually, reddit is not coming. That’s kinda the whole problem outlined above.

for what its worth, the new (2024/2025) monster manual supposedly has spellcasting monsters with more “magical” actions built in. While they do still have a list of spells, they have more built in tailored “magic action” type things they would be using instead of spell casting in most scenarios, like having a “magic bolt” type attack for a mage or something. We don’t exactly know how extensive this is yet, since we’ve only seen previews so far, but it could make running spellcasting creatures a bit easier.

windows can still play castle of the winds? i play it all the time. In fact, i just booted it up again a moment ago to make sure it didnt break recently or something. I dont remember ever having any issues playing it, and ive played it off and on for decades. In fact, googling real quick, it looks like my abandonware even has a “easy installer” for it.

If a user is banned on their home instance, that ban is federated out to all instances. If a user is banned on a remote instance, they’re just banned locally on that instance, and their account remains active for all other instances.

They’re likely some remote users who have interacted enough with your instance to be federated over, and then banned on their home instance.

They were ripping off both their users and anyone using affiliate links (including the content creators who promoted them)

During checkout, when you clicked the “find coupon” button in honey (which it prompted you to do on screen during checkout), it would strip out any affiliate link and add their own. So if you clicked on a product from a review, they would strip out the referral link from the YouTube video or website that sent you and indicate they sent you instead and get the commission.

In addition, they were working with online retailers and basically extorting them. They said that if retailers paid them a fee, they got to pick the discount code that was used during checkout. So if there was a 20% coupon and a 5% coupon, stores could pay them to ignore the 20%.

This, in turn, was basically faking out their users, thinking they were giving them the “best deal” like they claimed to.

Might be worth starting in c/RPG with basic questions, and if they end up drumming up a lot of conversation maybe a community is warranted? I know traveller has been around a long time, but I don’t ever hear too much about it so I’d guess the community for it is pretty niche

That’s the flameskull from the d&d 5e monster manual

Monster tokens are probably one of my “unsung heroes” of gaming when it comes to travel; I know people (myself included) probably always go to with minis, but if i’m going to a convention, traveling for the holidays, etc. tossing a whole pile of tokens into a bag make for great addition. No particular brand, just whatever i’ve picked up over the years.

Yeah, I don’t think there’s any way to report communities, just users and messages

Nope, definitely not. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. FYI, the reports came through a little weird (since it’s about a community) and I accidentally hit ban on your account, but I’ve rescinded it (also on mobile so the interface was a bit different)

Pretty much anything that telegraphs people gathering somewhere with supplies, or hints towards somewhere that can be fortified (army base, buildings that can lock down like government buildings, schools, possibly hospitals, etc) is a pretty easy way to get your players to gravitate towards it.