“…the Holy Roman Empire.” (Quickly and quietly) “It’s actually Germany, but don’t worry about it”

Edit: to be clear, I was quoting Bill Wurtz

The way you used italics, I gotta ask, is excommunication coming from the Presbyterians unusual compared to other Christian groups?

…I’m out of the loop, are sorcerers somehow less effective in social and/or combat encounters with specifically blue and bronze dragons?

“Oh, no, those powers require being the kid in that situation…”

Yeah, you could easily reflavor component-requiring Animal Friendship as “just feeding the animal and somehow flawlessly avoiding harm”, just to make it ambiguous whether this is actually magic or just mundane.

I haven’t actually seen this being used, but since Hypnotic Pattern in DND5E can require a stick of incense as a component if you’re using spell components, I imagined someone casting that by twirling a thurible (incense burner on a chain) above their head, and somehow physically throwing the scent into the targeted area, and then a (mostly) harmless explosion of colorful, sparkly gas charms any affected targets through sheer fascination.

Yeah, I think there’s a vast difference between what we have now (ChatGPT and whatnot), vs the theoretical possibility of an AGI (artificial general intelligence), or even an AI based entirely off of human neural patterns. Mind you, brain uploading sounds hard, so maybe I’d see a completely synthetic AGI as more likely.

But if we were ever to develop an AGI, we’d better start giving those things humanesque rights fast.

The first sentence made me think “alright, Kingdom of Loathing”, but I don’t know if goblins in that universe imprint on people.

Come to think of it, there may have been one character in West of Loathing that popped, respawned, and had no memory loss at all, so never mind.

And in IRL taxonomy, they’re more closely related to animals than plants, but probably diverged long before sponges came about, let alone other animals.

Talos Principle. The VR version of the first game, haven’t gotten around to the second game yet. I love the puzzles (when I don’t struggle with timing running past mines), and it’s hilarious that the philosophical test to make a Milton admin profile showed me how utterly unprepared I am for philosophical debate, and how weirdly contradictory my viewpoints might be. Mind you, the only philosophy class I’ve taken in my life was an ethics class.

TL;DR Talos Principle is amazing so far, even though it makes me want to slink off back to college and sheepishly register for a philosophy class.

Ok, so it’s just a taste thing in this particular case, and not some other logistical thing like preservation?

Worldbuilding idea for a challenging campaign: give every fully-sentient humanoid character, commoners included, a bite attack that powerful. That aughta put the kibosh on any murderhobo behavior for a time.

Plus, human bites can carry a lot of bacteria and whatnot, so arguably some of that damage should be poison or necrosis damage.

Also, we can and do eat some mild poisons because they’re tasty somehow.

I have a love of chocolate, but smaller animals can’t eat as much without severe metabolic issues that might kill them.

And capsaicin is straight-up an anti-mammal deterrent. Birds might be able to eat it with no reaction at all. Meanwhile humans just deal with their temperature receptors being freaking hacked for seemingly no other reason than fun.

Gonna be honest, this is the post that caused me to learn (via dictionary definition/Wikipedia) that I’ve probably been using the word “debriefing” wrong (I assumed debriefing referred to something like aftercare, but in a military/espionage context),

Probably not at all what you were expecting to accomplish with this post, but thanks much regardless.

Fun fact: the field of archeology may be subject to procedure changes in the future due to the advent of ground-penetrating radar.

Oddly, I’m guessing having a flower within two blocks may not be a requirement anymore, as the nearest other botanical things are jack-o-lanterns, and some netherwort that’s probably out of the range mentioned in your quote.