The Gaming Den

James Jacobs wrote: I'm just not seeing the difference between hold person taking out a CR 7 giant due to a coup de grace setup and hold person doing the same setup on a CR 7 orc barbarian, I guess.

So implicit in this is that Jacobs is fine with save-or-dies as early as level 3, as long as it requires team effort.

What the old maxim? Those who can, do. Those who can't critique. Those who can't critique teach. I figure the book will be aimed more towards video game design but parts of it should overlap with table top gaming. It's not that expensive, but I bet you'd get as much from just listening earnestly to ...

I think the left/right wing spectrum will do a poor job in representing his ideology. He seemed to hate large corporations as well, maybe he was something of a populist. It will be interesting to see how both camps paint him as a loon member of the other team.

It's not bullshit to hold the opinion that you're going to make more employment contacts outside university than in it. Folks can shit everywhere on anything they want but it doesn't change the fact that we're all basically bullshitting here and no one has anything substantive to really add other t...

But the great thing about college is you are hiding from the 'real world' for 3-4 years. So get your degree while the economy sucks, hopefully in 3 years they'll be hiring.

It's just like there's the sensation that there's more violent crime now as opposed to decades ago. That's not really the case, it's just reported or commented on more.

I just have to say it.... Venture Brothers. The first two seasons were so funny that sometimes I laughed so hard sound stopped coming out. Now I just watch out of the hope that they might get their heads out of their asses. So far, it's been endless pedophilia jokes and episodes dedicated to explai...

+1

If you don't have a release in university chances are you will burn out. Some people binge drink, some people game. Who the hell can't spare 4 hours out of their week to game or have some fun? College/University can be hard but it's not that hard.

I don't know what it's like in the states, but in Canada taking summer courses can usually be a good idea. Some people find it easier to do tougher courses, since you may only be focusing on one course at a time. Getting your credits finished quicker means you may be able to take a semester off late...

I think like Lago said, this is going to take time. First people have to become tolerant of their even being gay people. Then they'll just be uncomfortable with same sex couples holding hands, but after a while they'll just stop caring. Interracial couples won the right to marry in all the states by...

I've been learning how processor speed has been increasing in class and what the limitations are. Within 10 years we will have reduced transistors to the smallest possible, which is about 10 atoms long. That will leave us with computer chips that aren't as powerful as a human brain, but we can hook ...

They also did a class revision of the cavalier, alchemist, inquisitor, summoner, and witch. I'm assuming they haven't fixed much. A funny thing about their base classes is that 3 out of 6 of them have a Bard's BAB and casting progression. It's like Bulhman read on a forum that Bards are balanced so...

It seems like something that's strongly in the hands of the GM. If they let you get away with it, fine, but most gamers/GMs don't want to win a session by just placing a call.

As vexing as shadzar is, is this the proper response in a thread talking about people being persecuted for their orientation?

GAs are still inefficient in a large number of ways because they are so wasteful and erratic. As a relation of beam search they can end up specialising in some portion of the search space, ignoring the existence of greater maxima elsewhere. The fact that the rules for this particular game create a ...

There have been approximately 10 doublings since 1980. That means that computing speed has been multiplied by 1024. So 100 computers operating for 10 hours every night for 30 nights back then is still equivalent to about a day of continuous operation by equivalent machines today. I'm pretty sure th...

Good old genetic algorithms. Cold, merciless, antisocial, ignorant, and stridently literal. Ridiculously inefficient compared to any sort of design process, thiough. Ten hours a night on a hundred machine cluster is a hilarious amount of processing power. Not in 1981 it wasn't. Back in 81 that amou...

One thing that really annoyed me about Daybreakers was that Sam Neill disregards the idea of finding a cure so out of hand. Assuming the blood of reverted vampires doesn't have any after effects (it does in the movie) it solves all the vampire's problems. They use the cure on prisoners, BAM , less m...

As for Venezuela... evidence always turns up with these things, but there's none here. Most states in Venezuela's neighborhood were pretty much hoping the coup succeeded - and so did the US. Material support for the opposition and hoping Chavez fails are different things. I'm pretty certain the US ...

Not only that, multiclassing gives options, and dumber players/DMs don't like options. Seriously, they don't want you to have them and they don't want to have them themselves. That's why you'll see certain players always pick Sorcerer over Wizard, they only have to choose their spells once. There wa...

So you want to turn a Fighter into a sort-of Artificer? Artificers are more competitive than Fighters, a feat like you describe wouldn't be broken, but why bother when you can just play an Artificer?

I will follow in the steps of Jon Stewart when I feign shock at the fact that corporations can spend money to influence politicians . Holy crap! While this is worrisome with respect to politicians, how it could allow corporations to affect public discourse is what I find worrying. It has gotten pre...

cthulhu wrote:Google has way more of a monopoly.

I'd argue they have more market share, but aren't as close to being a monopoly. If someone wants to switch search engines it's free to do so, Google can't really force you to use their products.

There are ways to optimize 3D pathfinding, in a softer implementation sense and a rigorous Computer Science sense. Unless the pathfinding is unusually atrocious it won't detract from the game. What I think the ultimate goal of cRPGs is a game world where all the NPCs have unique motivations, drives ...

I've alway thought that the idea of 'Corporate personhood' was bullshit, you can't send a corporation to jail if it acts criminally. So it's a law I'd like to see revoked, I don't think it will because both parties are too beholding to corporations. I'm sure someone would like to rebut this idea by ...