My bet is on either thermals or power supply.

Not likely to be RAM, since issues there are more likely to either prevent the machine starting in the first place, or lock up if it fails while the machine is in operation.

Not likely to be CMOS battery since that generally wouldn’t cause the machine to shut off, it just preserves firmware settings between power cycles.

In theory, there could be an intermitted short happening somewhere and the PSU’s OCP is kicking in, but I’ve never come across something like that. Similarly, there could be a problem with an internal power cable connection doing the same, but it sounds like you’ve already checked that.

I would test with a different PSU if you can. Thermals should be easy to check for too with the many pieces of available software to keep track of such things.

Xfce might be the choice here, since most of benefits of Wayland won’t really apply to this machine (from an end user perspective) and it is relatively lightweight.

Been hearing a lot about Hyprland, will probably check it out even if I don’t end up using it on this build.

How does loading up a game through steam work with that? I’m a big fan of Sway (and i3) but I don’t use them on gaming focused systems at all, so I’m curious.

I’ve bound a few PDFs, but I typically leave the cover looking very simple.

For zines, I print them on nicer paper and sew them together instead of stapling. For things I intend to be more durable, I make stiffened paper bindings with actual front and back cover boards (usually covered in construction paper).

I love doing this with PDFs, it’s much nicer and more personal than putting them on an iPad or something.

I’m still reading through both of the resources you linked, but I think the OD&D setting in particular is going to help me a ton. I also think I can pull some structure from the unofficial Dark Souls ruleset – Age Creation in particular.

Thanks! These are perfect!

I probably should’ve been more clear, but I’m not looking for systems. I don’t think trying to replicate the mechanics of Souls leads to the best experience. In fact, I think most mechanical aspects of the games would make for an actively bad experience when transferred to ttrpgs, because player skill (the ultimate Soulsborne level up mechanic) doesn’t really come into play in the same way, and fighting a boss half a dozen times isn’t all that fun in tabletop games.

The parts I think ttrpgs can replicate are setting and level design, and that’s what it seems is in short supply whenever people talk about Souls in tabletop form. That’s why I gave the example of Vermis I which seems perfect, I just want more things like that.

Checking out Vaults of Vaarn, though, it might be a good fit. It’s hitting some of the notes I’m looking for in its setting. Comes with lots of random tables too!

Make a city setpiece

Mountain Greatbridge Ruins:

Visible from any point in the city is the towering support of a colossal bridge that once spanned the nearby valley and connected two mountaintops. There is a matching one on the other side of its span, and several fragments of its deck can be found in the valley below. It is made of a material unlike those common to the region, colored a deep blue-gray and unusually heavy. Both the supports and fragments of the bridge are adorned with geometric patterns reminiscent of but not identical to ancient architecture that can be found in the city’s nearly-forgotten catacombs. When viewing the bridge support during a nighttime storm, it’s said that a a faint blue glow can be seen coming from the patterns.

Nobody knows who built it or why, and the collapsed bridge has stood in its current state as long as anyone can remember. There are some rumors that the city of today was built atop the ruins of a previous civilization, also responsible for the catacombs. Those people, whoever they were, abandoned this region long ago.

Go for the Dynavap. It’s the thing that feels the most like smoking to me, but you get the benefits of it not tasting like an ashtray and it being slightly better for your lungs. They’re cheap enough that it’s not a huge financial outlay either.

It’s not the only vape I use and like, but its the one I use the most often.

Hoping the bug with Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro is fixed so it doesn’t take up a huge amount of CPU resources to run effects. I had a really cool set of effects going that I just couldn’t use because of this.

To be fair though, that isn’t fully OpenRGB’S fault, I think the bug is actually in the effects plugin, not the main application.

You can use it on Arch too. It’s probably worth checking out the whole Power Management page on the wiki, but in short, the major desktop environments all have hooks for these options, and there are a lot of options for supplementary packages to power-profiles-daemon that you might find helpful.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management

Thank you ☺️

It’s been several years since I worked with Manjaro, so I don’t remember which specific apps I ran into problems with, but the general idea is this:

Manjaro holds back packages for several weeks behind vanilla Arch, so packages from the AUR are often built on versions of their dependencies that aren’t yet available to Manjaro users. This can result in apps not installing properly (or at all), or apps that were previously installed without issue suddenly breaking when they attempt to update.

This isn’t actually specific to Manjaro – other Arch-derivatives like Garuda can also run into this problem. You’ll find that any Arch-based distro that makes significant changes to Arch (like holding back packages, or distributing versions of packages different to the ones in the Arch repositories) can have issues if it’s attempting to use things from the AUR. Arch derivatives that make no changes to the base system, and just use the vanilla Arch repositories don’t have this problem. Endeavour OS is an example of this, as the only changes it makes are additive – they have their own extra packages, but don’t change any core functionality from vanilla Arch.

EposVox on youtube ran into some issues with Garuda about a year ago, and those are of the same flavor as what I experienced on Manjaro, even if they aren’t identical issues.

I do have one note of caution for anyone considering Manjaro: For most uses it’s totally fine, but if you plan to make heavy use of the AUR, tread carefully – because it updates on a different cycle from vanilla Arch, there can sometimes be unforeseen breakages in AUR packages. If it’s a gaming-only machine, this will likely not be a problem, but if you plan to also daily drive it as a general purpose workstation, this might be a deal breaker.

I mean it’s not a comeback, it’s just advice. I started using Linux in 2004, when trying to Google an answer basically never worked, and once I was told that the included manuals contained all the instructions for everything, I started having a much better time. It was humbling since I considered myself very proficient with Windows troubleshooting, but I had to recognize that I still needed to read the instructions now that I was in unfamiliar territory.

Anyway, since you’re not interested in that, have a nice day, and I hope your future experiences work out better for you.

If it’s a terminal command you need help with, type “man [command]” in the terminal and it will give you the literal manual page for the command. For example, to get the manual for tmux, type “man tmux”

If it’s something else, check the Arch Wiki. Yes, even if you aren’t running Arch. It’s some of the most comprehensive Linux documentation all on one site and most of it can be generalized to any distro.

But to be honest, your attitude here makes me think you will never have a good time on Linux. It does require a certain curiosity and willingness to learn – maybe even some patience while you get the experience to intuit solutions as you likely already do on Windows without thinking about it.

The manuals really do contain exact information on how to engage with pretty much everything, but if someone suggesting that you use the resources designed to help you makes them “an ass,” then I suspect you will simply fail to become familiar with the environment. I’m not trying to be a dick, I’m just telling you that when you’re new, you need a different mindset than what you’re showing with this comment.

I have an XPS 13 with the i7 1165G7 and Xe graphics are fine for light stuff like Minecraft (even with shaders) or indie titles from the last 10 years. He won’t be able to push very high framerates or resolutions, but at 1080p with low/medium graphics, it should be workable.

Ben Milton’s take on traps is, I think, the best way to handle them.

Don’t use traps as a hidden thing. Make the trap itself obvious to the players, and describe it’s positioning. The trick should be for the players to figure out how to either avoid or safely disarm the trap.

One example he uses is a pit trap with a narrow board serving as a bridge over the top of it. The smell of volatiles indicates that there may be some kind of fuel at the bottom of it. The board is on a rotating mechanism, and if anyone tries to stand on or otherwise move the board, it ignites the fuel below with flint inside the mechanism, like a lighter. Since the pit is too large to jump across, players will need to find another way across.

In my own game, I recently pointed out a section of floor filled with skeletons whose legs were partially sunken into the tiles up to the knee. Since the sections of the floor were too long to jump across, they tested what was wrong by throwing objects onto the tiles and seeing what happened. Once it was clear that only objects that had been stationary for a few seconds sank in, they sprinted through the hallway and made it to the other side fine (one character lost a boot). They had fun, nobody felt it was unfair, and I would call that a win.

Unfortunately for them, the floor on the other side of this trap was greased, so they went sliding down a chute to the fourth floor of the dungeon, and had to look for a way back up, which came in the form of a previously inactive elevator that was a shortcut back to the first floor.

Sen’s Fortress in Dark Souls 1 is a good example of how traps like these can be utilized. They’re all obvious and easy to avoid, and serve more as positioning puzzles than as gotcha mechanics.

What’s the elevator pitch for Blueholme? Aside form the book itself being nice of course!

I’ve found that it gives me a decent skeleton of something that I can then apply to my actual problem, but not much more, and it usually comes with some pretty big mistakes. I was trying to learn Z80 assembly and it gave me a good idea of how my code should generally look, but I did end up having to rewrite a whole bunch of it before I could actually execute anything.