Finished my first ever campaign of DnD yesterday–Tomb of Annihilation. We even survived after completing the objective and, more importantly, had a ton of fun while exploring the module and solving or bypassing the many puzzles in it.

So I wanted to give a bit of advice to people who thought of playing DnD but think it's too hard or expensive. Obviously, all that's below is my opinion, and if you think of adopting the hobby, you should consider watching a few games on YouTube or listening to more people who have just started out.

Option number zero is probably unavailable to you, but it's still worth mentioning. If your friends or acquaintances play, simply ask them if you can join. Normally, role-players are happy to help out people trying DnD or other tabletops.

I saw a thought-provoking post on Twitter about a week ago. It got something like 700 000 likes, and it's about one of my favorite topics: forcing people in a weaker position into doing the right thing.

The tweet's author has a younger sister. The sister is fourteen, and she wants to date a seventeen-year-old guy (the exact age difference is somewhere between three and a half years and four years). The author is polling the Internet to find out how many people think this kind of relationship is okay or not. She already knows the answer, I suspect; it's just that her and her mother's protests aren't working on her younger sister and she wants to use public opinion to reinforce the point. Of course, the overwhelming majority of people say that such a relationship will bring only pain to the younger girl, and, satisfied, the author walks away to presumably force her sister to stay away from that trainwreck.

She is asking the wrong question.

I woke up, to the transient glimmer of the butterfly
stuttering in the gold and emerald of a summer morning.
The horror.

Why there be no sweet man-on-man action in mah' AAA games?

As I hear on Twitter, some people got their balls stuck between subway train doors over some lesbian stuff in The Last of Us 2, and somebody noticed that while there is some representation of female gay relationships in AAA gaming, there are barely any mandatory male gay relationships. And that there was absolutely no representation at E3.

While I understand that all people want their stories told, making a mandatory male gay romantic relationship for a protagonist in a AAA game is commercial suicide. Let’s break this down. AAA game. These games are expensive, and companies need to at least recoup the costs.

Anthony Bourdain is gone.

He was such a light in his TV programs, and he was a wonderful companion to anyone who travels and loves food and life. It is unfair that someone who was this alive is snatched from us by depression.

In the wake of his passing there has been a lot of talk about the need to reach out, both for those who find themselves trapped inside their minds and for their loved ones. I feel like all the right things have been said on the subject, so I won't add anything.