The Gaming Den

Distance isn't an issue when we have flying mounts, teleportation, and the like. While any one network might be small in number, it can be vast in distance. That also means that networks can be connected. The merchant that buys the carpenter's chairs can also buy the spice merchant's pepper because...

First of all a countermeasure is not a nerf. Fools Gold would still objectively exist and would still objectively make totally believable illusions of big piles of shiny, shiny gold. That illusion still has all utility it always had, and you can totally fool people with it. However, that does not me...

3) Restrict all trading of goods more complicated than a +1 sword to some ridiculous hub city like Sigil. That way, no one cares whether the necklace you otherwise legally acquired is actually the phylactery of a dracolich, because if they come and start shit the Sons of Mercy will rip him limb fro...

By that same standard, no one would actually make anything either, because the carpenter has to worry about the wood he's carving suddenly becoming an angry miniature treant and eating his face off... all the damn time.. and the potter has to worry about mud men taking over his shop every time he ta...

Wasn't that new record set with the 50 BMG round? So we are talking, essentially the same bullet and barrel length with only differences in the reciever platform.

Oh, sure. I'm just pointing out technical problems that have to be addressed. I mean, I've carried a Ma Deuce with the barrel a few times, and I'm no troll, so I've got no problems with them lugging it around... and from there its a short-ish step to shooting the damn thing. Like: here are the real ...

Actually, I have a 'loosely based on real life theoretical physics' explanation for the 'always one week' jump drive phenomenon in traveller that holds up pretty good. In short: One week corresponds to the 'thickness' of space as it is folded. The size of the fold (Distance in real space) is utterly...

Well, technically we are talking about a whole 'nother beast in HMGs. That's your tripod or pintle mounted .50 BMG. The barrel alone weighs as much as an M60 (23 lbs vs 27 lbs, if memory serves). Even if a troll can lug one around as a sidearm, the design is based purely on being fired from a mount....

The point is that you won't be playing it out at all. Adventurers walk into Greyhawk City with couches and tables from the lich-king's tower and no one wants to buy their stuff. Currency and commodities are the things you can mini-game, but the thing where people even want to buy the dirty swords y...

As an interesting tidbit: Military rounds tend to be made of steel rather than copper jacketed lead, for cost reasons. They are lighter, which I think we can safely say is a neutral factor in battlefield performance (higher velocities offset lack of mass for inertia purposes, etc...), but more impo...

I've seen it done in some games, though I think more as a function of the GM, where the less useful the loot was, the harder it was to sell outside of major cities. I think I've seen a GM flip the 'wealth by population' chart for buying magic items to suggest just how much money was available locall...

Differentiating a light machine gun from an assault rifle is fairly important but also difficult. I mean, they use 5.56x45mm bullets. I think I might have them walk in at the same 4-2 as an assault rifle and have better auto-fire characteristics (HV options, bipods, belt feeds). But of course, some...

The 'deliberate tumble' thing is a myth. All rifle bullets will do a 180 flip after hitting something solid (a tree branch, your ribs, whatever) due to the fact that the are comparatively long and thin, and... you know... spinning. This isn't a design feature by any means, though it is useful for in...

Just a point of interest. I live not too far from Snohomish, to the point where I not entirely unseriously suggested dropping in on the trials earlier last year just to be an eyewitness for the web geek crowd. At the local half price books they have a dozen each, brand spanking new, fresh off the pr...

Honestly, barrel length is a big deal. The same .22 bullet fired out of a snub nosed pistol will hurt a lot less than when it's fired from a rifle. Compressed gases get to push on the bullet much more when the bullet is going a long distance being pushed by the gas than when it is going a short dis...

Many modern assault rifles only fire in bursts. Also, the AK-47 kicks like a fucking angry mule and is generally inaccurate. Its core strength is less simplicity of operation (most guns are dead simple to operate) but its durability. The anecdotal story is that AK's have been covered with cola and b...

No, I certainly agree that commodities money is not the best economic model, by any stretch... but it is better than a pure barter economy, which is what you spent several posts loudly proclaiming a gold coin based economy was. I think an argument could be made that the D&D style gold piece econ...

Well, the first step is to ignore Frank's rant. He has obviously never heard of Commodities Money, which persisted up until the last, oh, century or two as the standard basis of economics, and yet we weren't all piss poor dirt farmers staring mournfully at our piles of worthless shekels that some as...

Hm... I opened this thread to see what the title meant. Interestingly, it refers to exactly what the title says.

I'm caught in a recursive loop... somebody toss me a line here...

Given the way Aasimov fans tend to go on and on about the Three Laws, I sort of figured he couldn't have put forth that problem as the core plot of the damn three laws books...

I don't know. I only like Aasimov's stuff when he was writing for young adults...

That is... very close... to the solution in the I, Robot movie.

the later books of Vorkosigan seem to dwell more on interpersonal dramady, while the earlier ones were more 'high adventure'. Of course, they aren't exactly written chronologically... though they do TREND chronologically. Its tempting to say she outgrew her sweet spot as an author. The brisk lighthe...

I'm not sure I buy the obligate herbivore. At least in the terrestrial model we can observe hierarchies of general intelligence, with omnivores on top, carnivores next, and herbivores on the bottom, just above plants (which is all they really have to outsmart). We can even explain why this is in pre...

Oi, and here the thread was starting to move AWAY from Dogfucking and into the much more interesting 'What is personhood?'...

... and with one Frank post we are back to Dogfucking all the time.

I am horribly going to mangle this but: A person is defined by a certain sense of self awareness and abstract thought. I've actually heard it formulated that the key is 'Self reflection'. An octopus or a dog does not dwell on why they do what they do. They don't worry if an action is good or bad. Th...