erin

Why do you keep posting this? Your problem isn't with people looking at naked pictures or lewd stories, it's with exploitation. That's a capitalist problem, not a porn one. Are you suggesting that in cases of capitalist exploitation we ban the exploited industry instead of regulating the capitalists?

Next page in this playbook is fixing disproportionate domestic violence against women by beating men, and fixing disproportionate institutional racism by arresting more white men on bullshit charges. I think the underlying problems will just find a new outlet.

(not who you replied to) We can be anti-zionists without being pro-Iran. They have a horrific history of human rights abuses. Their sovereignty is being violated, but their government is not a good one.

Les Mis does not depict the second French Revolution, but the June Rebellion years earlier.

You should read Butler's "Who's Afraid of Gender?"

It would be on sight.

I feel like you've made a lot of assertions that don't make a lot of sense when compared to the real world. I agree that WotC is nothing like they used to be, have been gutted by Hasbro, and 5e is a pretty stale and lame example of a TTRPG. That doesn't make it any less easy to learn or homebrew. The starter sets and basic adventures were simple enough for my mother, a teacher, who has absolutely no TTRPG experience, to run a game with her 5th grade students, who were perfectly capable of handling the premade characters and simple module. The game has a very easy entry point, and even when approaching the full ruleset, isn't hard to understand when actually reading the books (especially the new ones, all their other major flaws aside), which more people do than you're suggesting. New players get excited, the PHB is easy enough to follow with interesting art and ideas, and you really don't even need the DMG to run a successful game, though the frameworks it sets up can make your life easier.

There is a reason other than branding that DnD remains as incredibly popular as it is, as no matter how many streamers play it and how much sponsorship money DnD beyond gives out, if new players enticed to try the game couldn't get the hang of it pretty quickly, they wouldn't stick around. Are there better systems for modularity and ease of play? Obviously. But that doesn't make those things untrue for 5e. The million Kickstarter projects with homebrew should be examples enough. You keep asserting that "no one plays 5e as designed," which is technically true if you define that as only using rules strictly in the books, but really misses the point. People are using the classes and mechanics put into the game, and a great deal of official optional rules have become ubiquitous in every game. Popular house rules get added on, and people make up their own mechanics, because it's a TTRPG, and that's true for any of them.

Obviously there aren't great sources that aren't anecdotal, but a quick glance around LFG posts, LGS events, and online DnD specific communities should be enough to show that people are indeed playing the game "as intended," and home brewing to their heart's content. The reputation you claim 5e has simply doesn't exist to the casual player. You're totally right, in that this is how most dedicated TTRPG communities see the game, but to the casual player (which is most of them), 5e is what the cool streamers play. They watch it, think "Hm, that doesn't look so hard," grab a book and run with it. I've seen this happen repeatedly with friends that have never played a TTRPG in their life. They don't know about WotC's past, they don't know about the company being gutted, and they don't know about the designers abandoning a lost cause. All they know DnD as is the default TTRPG (which it shouldn't be), and pick it up, finding it easy enough to play and homebrew.

I'm more concerned with the "people don't play the rules" part, but fair enough.

I don't fully disagree with you, but you're just wrong about the area of effect shapes. The rules are very defined on how to represent and find spheres, cylinders, lines, cubes, cones, etc. The new 5.5 rules make it even more defined. The game is absolutely designed to be played as written, because it's braindead easy compared to most systems, which is basically all 5e has going for it: easy to learn and run, easy to homebrew. Every DnD 5e game I've played has followed the rules, not just for areas, but most mechanics, especially when using actual battle maps. Theater of the mind gets a bit more loosely goosey. Every group has their own house rules, but the game is definitely meant to be played, and it is. It almost seems weird to even make that claim, because a quick trip to a LGS or playing in a few local groups would tell you otherwise. Everyone wants to be Critical Role or Dimension 20.

I mean the danger of capsizing in a cruise ship is vanishingly tiny, and the Navy has similarly top heavy vessels, like aircraft carriers. They have massive keels, and their displacement is so huge that rough seas mean almost nothing to them. You're far more likely to die in millions of more common activities than to a cruise ship capsizing. I don't really see how taking statistics is helping your argument at all, as statistics are on the cruise's side. Driving or riding in a car is far more dangerous.

Now, cruise ships suck for other reasons, like their exploitation of poor countries and massive carbon emissions. Arguing against cruise ships from a statistical safety standpoint is like arguing against airplanes because they could crash, regardless of how likely. The cruise ship excursions and activities on board are more dangerous than their seaworthiness.

You decided I'm mad, not me. You also didn't answer the question. Obvious rage bait, shouldn't have fed the troll.

Can you elaborate? What is "honest and open" about being rude to someone for no reason?