This is good advice but I will add that putting a timer on player’s turns is also itself a bit of a problem…it comes off as infantalizing.

That’s not really how bots work. It would have to be coded to actually read and reply to your responses

I disagree with everything besides #1. I think this may actually be too dated to be helpful.

Anyone gone back to school for an advanced degree after working in the field for a long time? What was your experience like?

The thought entered my mind to go back to school and get a Masters or something. I have 14 years in the field already but my bachelor’s was unrelated. Anyone else done something similar and have any input?

You can use Google Forms to get the RSVP functionality you’re looking for. And maybe a dedicated Discord channel with suitable posting restrictions so it’s JUST DMs posting such forms? Or you could even have them DM you their pitches and you post them, such that you can make the channel so only you can post. I also like using this tool for scheduling: https://www.when2meet.com/

https://tenor.com/view/gif-gif-19496570

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A friend’s MSP got wiped off the map by this, we think. Not just exploited in the wild but, apparently, easy enough that random vandal kiddies are playing with it

They used to just hit http://localhost/:<various ports>/cc.png which connected to your Creative Cloud app directly, but then Chrome started blocking Local Network Access, so they had to do this hosts file hack instead.

Ok but adobe what if you didn’t portscan me either, please.

Science Fantasy is usually a fantasy story in a setting typically associated with scifi. The classic example is Star Wars; it’s it a world with spaceships and lasers, but it’s about space wizards having swordfights.

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Every custom, every belief, every fashion, every turn of speech?

No, of course not. Why would anyone waste effort on infinite irrelevant details? But everything there is to know, I know.

I do believe that player should be able to gain a basic understanding of the cultures their characters come from. The question is how much information can they get, and process?

You give them an overview at the start with the information you guess might be relevant or interesting to them, and supplement it during the game as necessary.

Part of the fun of DMing for me is in homebrewing cultures…or, more accurately, homebrewing factions that have a culture.

Besides which, there are some fundamental flaws in your premises:

You assert that a counterpart culture is easier to understand than an original one. I 100% understand any culture I make up, definitionally. On the other hand, neither I nor anyone else at my table can say the same about any IRL culture. Even members of a given IRL culture can never fully understand the totality of it.

You also say

[if] you create fantasy ancestries from scratch, you need to convey all that information to the players.

And I don’t think that’s true. Players don’t need to know everything about a culture to interact with them. In many cases, the player characters are themselves unfamiliar with that culture, in which case any mystery, mistakes, miscommunications etc are valuable in-character roleplay. And when the PCs would be familiar with a relevant aspect of a given culture, you can simply tell them that detail, no need to loredump everything. (Eg “I beg for mercy” “Your character knows that The Southern Pirates are notorious for never taking prisoners, are you sure you want to try that?”)

If those data feeds were mostly generated from gmail inboxes, then they’d naturally never see messages already caught by google, skewing the data. This reads like marketing.

Depending on your field, your business may already have a cybersecurity department. There’s an endless parade of thankless grunt work to be done like patching (often after hours), following up with users whose machines didn’t patch for whatever reason, and so on. (With your manager’s permission) you may be able to reach out to them and volunteer to help with some of those tasks, as a way to dip a toe into that world and start learning.

Spent some time looking for ideas on how to do a security training (compliance requirement) that didn’t suck. Cribbing from some reddit posts, I think I’m going to give everyone a notecard with something like “Is Bob Bobson a client here”, have them pair up, and do a little phone conversation roleplay where one person is a visher trying to trick the other into revealing the piece of information, while the other person gets practice saying “No.” Seemed like a good way to let the staff dip a toe into thinking like an attacker.

Yeah to be clear, I do not recommend my method and I don’t think it’s a good allocation of mental resources. I’m just stubborn :P

FWIW, I use Diceware for password generation; it’s good at making memorable yet still random passphrases.