Split from:     I want to run a campaign "from the book" for a group of new players (played RPGs before, but stuff much much lighter then D&amp;D, and I've not DMed this edition before. I DMed D&amp;D 4e once: over prepared in some areas, under prepared in others, so the pacing was horrible and off putting. I didn't run it again (although the players seemed happy to try again).  My concern: by trying to run it "from the book" I might accidentally railroad them too much, That changing events too far from the module will cause errors in continuity, that will force me to improvise too much for my first game.  I've flicked through both the Tomb of Annihilation where this could be fun with the hex-crawl random encounter portion without too much continuity problems, as well as Waterdeep: Dragon Heist which seems more reliant on knowing the lore of the town, and even though it's modular, certain events still unfolding in a given manner.  What happens if avoiding a direct fight or encounter runs counter to the published adventures? i.e. making friends with the goblins throws out a future plot point of the adventure that I'm not yet familiar with? Or they completely miss and don't find a clue.
I'm DM'ing a play-by-post campaign and I'm at a point in the adventure where the group all meets for the first time. They've all had something stolen from them at the same time and saw a creature that took something run into a nearby alley (there's three separate parties within the play group currently, as they've only just started, so there's three separate robbers running into alleys in the marketplace).  Ideally, I want the players to have their PCs all give chase so they end up in the same part of town, all looking for the same thing. However, I don't want to railroad my players into doing this. I know I'm not supposed to take away player agency or narrate their actions for them, but the only way I could think of was to tell them that they start giving chase.  So how would you deal with this situation? And more broadly, how can I stop something like this happening again?  If it matters, we're currently playing D&amp;D 5e.
Javascript object members that are prototyped as arrays become shared by all class instances Consider the following piece of Markdown code:  This is some regular text.      &gt;&gt;&gt; def factorial(n):     ...     return 1 if n &lt; 2 else n * factorial(n - 1)     ...   * This is a list item.      &gt;&gt;&gt; def factorial(n):     ...     return 1 if n &lt; 2 else n * factorial(n - 1)     ...    Notice that the second code block is preceded by a list item.   Why is the factorial code not properly formatted under these circumstances? To demonstrate the problem, I'll insert the Markdown code show above:    This is some regular text.  &gt;&gt;&gt; def factorial(n): ...     return 1 if n &lt; 2 else n * factorial(n - 1) ...     This is a list item                 def factorial(n):       ...     return 1 if n &lt; 2 else n * factorial(n - 1)       ...               This applies to numbered as well as unnumbered lists. Duplicate id in list My service is working fine for single record insert when i send bulk records at that time it showing soapenv:ClientSystem.ListException: Duplicate id in list: 01ti0000002gUP1AAM Class.Sample.behaviourOfWebService: line 235, column 1  the error line is Database.upsert(pList)     p.productCode = pCode;    p.name =pName;    pList.add(p);  } How can I do a brute force (ciphertext only) attack on an CBC-encrypted message? Given a CBC ciphertext and IV, how can I find the encryption key?  We are limited with an 8 chars key, each char in the range of [a..h], so I can generate every possible key (these are only $8^8 = 2^{24}$ (about 4 million) different possible keys).  How would I go about finding the correct one though? Exercise on local and global symmetry for a given Lagrangian density Is it possible to understand the One Piece storyline by watching the movies only? Currently, the only way to vote to delete (and undelete, since you can't see deleted posts) in the Android app is to open the post in a browser, and then vote to delete from there.  Can we get delete vote functionality within the app, as well as the ability to delete our own posts?  Worth to mention: users , so it's possible in the API.  Related: Definition of e I'm very eager to know and understand the definition of $e$. Textbooks define $e$ as follows $$ e = \lim_{p\to\infty} \left[1+\frac1{p}\right]^p \approx 2.71828 $$ Is there an &quot;easy to understand&quot; proof of this? I'm really looking for a derivation of this which is very intuitive and easy to comprehend. By the way I'm watching . When discussing a treaty or international agreement, which is correct?  "There are 100 states party to the treaty." (for example, as used )  Or:  "There are 100 state parties to the treaty." (for example, as used )   Or: "There are 100 states parties to the treaty."  (for example, as used ) Most RPGs teach you that casual violence is the best solution to all your in-game problems. This is so well established a part of the vast majority of RPGs that there are entire satire RPGs like Greg Costikyan's  and John Tynes'  dedicated to showcasing the issue. Even now that the '80's anti-RPG hysteria is past, you see more sober critiques of endemic violence in RPGs in places like . In most RPGs, PCs become inured to murder and other antisocial activities very quickly, and enter the depths of depravity that wouldn't be appropriate in the worst parts of the world. Armed robbery, mass murder, and genocide become routine parts of an adventurer's day, something only stick-in-the-mud characters with the most extremely stated ethics object to. , even though it is not properly applied to just any conflict, is a PC's friend and they generally escalate any conflict in that direction. The sophistication of the gamer mindset towards introspection on this issue can be demonstrated in that the most meaningful question usually debated about in-game violence is some variant on &quot;but should we kill the noncombatant children&quot; or &quot;can we just murder people out of hand as long as they're from a typically evil race?&quot; In the real world, we generally a priori regard anyone having to have this discussion as a monster already. (P.S. The &quot;wipe out a given evil race&quot; thing isn't the point of this question; it is only mentioned to indicate that it's only &quot;that far&quot; that usually causes ethical handwringing from players, when that is a really quite extreme case and we should be uncomfortable with casual violence a lot sooner. ) What I'd like to have is a more realistic in-game treatment of conflict.  People getting wounded and giving up, taking and ransoming of prisoners, not always escalating a fistfight to weapons, not always escalating weapon combat to killing, etc.  Heck, as I write this, I'm watching an episode of Adventure Time with my daughter and the protagonists snuck in and rescued a princess kidnapped by the Ice King and then exit right next to his sleeping form. I thought, &quot;If this were D&amp;D they'd all be carefully coordinating a coup de grace to kill him in his sleep on the grounds that he inconvenienced them.&quot;  The problem isn't limited to D&amp;D of course, sci-fi PCs are happy to neutron bomb planets for convenience too, for example. I'm not part of the &quot;D&amp;D is Satanic&quot; crowd obviously, but I frankly do have compunctions about continually playing in games where the taught behavior is uncomfortably equivalent to the worst examples of human behavior we see on the nightly news. How can I give my PCs a newfound respect for human life? Refused UK Visit visa for lack of sufficient funds - What more can I do? I have georeferenced some images (ArcGIS -> Update Georeferencing) which creates a *.tfwx file with the new parameters for georeferencing.   I renamed it to *.tfw but QGIS is not able to read the georeferencing information.   Does anybody has any useful tips how to fix this? What is the value of $i^{i^{i^\ldots}}$? What is the value of $i^{i^{i^\ldots}}$?   My effort is the following: If $z, \alpha \in \mathbb{C}$ with $z \neq 0$ then we can write $z^{\alpha}=e^{\alpha \log z} = e^{\alpha [ \log |z|+i \text{ Arg z} + 2 \pi i m]}$ where $ m=0, \pm 1, \pm 2, \ldots$  and Arg z is the principle argument of the complex number $z$. But in above expression we don't have the finite no of exponents, so I am not sure how should I use this formula to the solve above problem. Thanks and Regards! Should operator<< be implemented as a friend or as a member function? That's basically the question, is there a "right" way to implement operator&lt;&lt; ? Reading  I can see that something like:  friend bool operator&lt;&lt;(obj const&amp; lhs, obj const&amp; rhs);   is preferred to something like   ostream&amp; operator&lt;&lt;(obj const&amp; rhs);   But I can't quite see why should I use one or the other.  My personal case is:  friend ostream &amp; operator&lt;&lt;(ostream &amp;os, const Paragraph&amp; p) {     return os &lt;&lt; p.to_str(); }   But I could probably do:  ostream &amp; operator&lt;&lt;(ostream &amp;os) {     return os &lt;&lt; paragraph; }   What rationale should I base this decision on?  Note:   Paragraph::to_str = (return paragraph)    where paragraph's a string. How do you do a deep copy of an object in .NET? Why do we need to use `int main` and not `void main` in C++? Why do we need to use int main and not void main in C++? How to use regex in String.contains() method in Java We all know that the amount of current flowing b/w the plates is independent of the frequency. If I were to ask why doesn't it depend then you'd probably say that it depends on the number of electrons rather than the frequency or you might show me a current vs frequency graph.  But here is my theoretical argument. Electric current is defined as the amount of charge flowing through a point/space/wire per unit time. Let I be current due to photo electrons ejected by photons of some frequency. Now if I would increase the frequency, the kinetic energy of the ejected electron would increases, therefore it will move faster and therefore contribute more current (charge will through the same point many times per unit time) . Thereby, giving a net current greater than I.  What is wrong with my argument?  After thinking a lot, I came up with a possible reason. However fast the electrons may move, but when they hit the metal plate, they would lose their velocity and start moving in drift velocity. Now there is a problem with this argument. If this were to be true then I should expect to see a big chunk of extra electrons getting stuck at the anode.  If my reasoning was correct, then why can't I see a big charge buildup at the anode. proof that on a compact manifold a vector field is complete I would like to know if my proof of the following statement is correct     If $M$ is a compact manifold, then every vector field $X$ over $M$ is complete.   Proof:  I take $p\in M$ and $(\gamma_p,I_p)$ a maximal integral curve through $p$. $I_p$ is open and non empty so if $I_p$ is closed, it is equal to $\mathbb{R}$.  So take $s\in \text{Adh}(I_p)$. There exists $t_i\rightarrow s, t_i\in I_p$. Define $q$ as $\text{lim}(\gamma_p(t_i))$ and take a maximal integral curve passing by $q$ as $(\gamma_q,I_q)$. Then since the vector fields are $C^\infty$, $\gamma_q(I_q)\cap\gamma_p(I_p)$ is nonempty (intuitively, this is clear but don't really know how to show it).  On the intersection, $\gamma_p$ and $\gamma_q$ coincide. So we can extend the maximal curve $\gamma_p$ to include $\gamma_q$. This implies that $q\in\gamma_p(I_p)$ and is actually equal to $\gamma_p(s)$  I think the main idea is there even though it probably lacks a bit of rigour. apt-get update only for a specific repository