Mordacius

$1 billion to start.

Another voice here to tell you that there's hope. I felt like you after high school too, but I found my way eventually. Hang in there. Keep reaching out for help when you need it. Things absolutely can be okay, and more people want to support you than you'd expect.

Fudged dice ruin the mood for me. If I'm playing, I'm there to figure out how to make crazy things work in spite of the risks. If I can't have that, I'd rather just read a book.

I don't usually talk about it in the middle though - I believe arguments at the table should be reserved for serious conflicts (rudeness between players and so on), not personal preferences. This is more a reason I'd check out of a campaign gracefully, and it's also one of a hundred reasons I really prefer to GM instead of play.

Wish I could boost this more than once.

This. I was phone support for dial-up internet for the transition - when I started, we just did our best and frequently worked with customers at their level. I enjoyed that, the customers did too. I got promoted easily.

By the time our jobs were getting shipped overseas and we were all getting fired, they replaced that with a 'knowledge tree' everyone was supposed to follow regardless of our personal experience in order to make sure all customers got the exact same experience. Softened the blow. I never went back to tech support as a job.

(This was like twenty years ago. I imagine it's only gotten more stifling since then.)

Very much so. It also highlights a shift in how writing works now that I'm concerned about: when humans are doing it, generally someone will copyedit or beta read (admittedly, not on clickbait sites). With AI? Yolo, just publish it as-is, since not paying humans was the whole point. We're gonna see more and more of that.

Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate finding out about her writing generally, and I agree that this is as relevant now as it was... literally every other time this same thing happened.