The Gaming Den

fectin wrote:I really like an idea Lago floated a while back that high fantasy is when individuals can challenge society's monopoly on force. It aligns a lot ,ore cleanly with what people seem to "feel" the distinction is.

That's a nice distinction, actually.

I'm not saying that the towers Camille can build aren't enormous. Quite the opposite: I'm trying to make the party aware that having one of those per magus might be colossal overkill where size is concerned, so that you don't end up wasting resources. I'm sorry if this came off as "CrTe is just...

A gyroscopic control rig works a little differently from the little toy gyroscopes: it changes the wheel's spin and its orientation in order to move you, rather than to keep you steady. However, there's no reason you couldn't use that as a stabilising rig. The main thing a gyrostabiliser needs to be...

That sucks, Count. I went through some pretty nasty depression in my mid 20s and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Well done on beating the mental part and I really hope your upward trajectory continues. Prak: I don't know how big your company is, but a general feeling of having been set up to fail is q...

To use unskilled human labour in order to save expensive mechanical labour is to run civilisation in reverse, dammit. Why? Edit: Nevermind. I'm watching the video. :) To reply anyway... If someone is hired to for a job that's just "do a machine's work but cheaper", then not only is though...

Stahlseele wrote: reusing the same old maps i could live with, that makes sense because it's the same location after all. but for fucks sake, at least use different objectives and starting points.

Really? Ugh. That's disappointing as hell. That's just a straight up lack of caring.

Strict physics was out to lunch when The Flash was created. I'm not even going to bother doing my normal physics-geekery on that one. The relativistic calculations would be fun, but working out the effect of air resistance and the potential for all sorts of electromagnetic effects would give me a ma...

So this has been a really, really fucking busy and stressful week, but I've still managed to get a little bit of writing done during lunchtimes. Please tell me what you think; please feel free to criticise my writing style, my knowledge of Shadowrun, my knowledge of physics and my personal hygeine. ...

Giovanni will be six on Saturday. He is going into first grade. This week, he made his very first comment on YouTube - completely on his own. Between that and today's XKCD , it really got me thinking... The desire to communicate via a medium that requires literacy is obviously a lot stronger than I...

Thanks for this review - I enjoyed reading it. The book looks interesting, and it sounds like the Hickmans have a good understanding of the social dynamics of how RPGs are played. The "signs of the oncoming enemy army from the east" is indirectly lifted from Robin D. Laws's spiel on how to...

Ah, my apologies. We're agreeing with one another then. If you have the power to target the inside of someone's body with physics effects, radiation in the brain wouldn't be my first choice. Simply target the connection between the brain and the spinal cord with enough heat to burn it out (it wouldn...

DSMatticus: You've just invented the concept of negative entropy and skipped straight over the civilian applications to weaponise it. Kudos, and I mean that sincerely. This amuses me greatly. Kaelik, momo: Accelerating a particle to near-c isn't that expensive in energy terms if you don't need to ru...

Spring 1220: Mathei: Adventuring to map out the auras and vis sources in the region. (XP TBD) Petrus: Setting up a lab. (2xp in MT) Vergil: Camille: Setting up a lab. (2xp in MT) Orsen: Nidratr: JeanPat, since that adventure is basically a one-player thing and this board doesn't like us opening up ...

There's two ways to do an Intellego spell: you can create an magical sense, or you can directly gain information. If it helps, think of it as the second option being just like a normal hermetic spell, and the first option being a successful attempt to graft an originally non-Hermetic magical concept...

I don't think you probably could. Which is why I suggested targeting a vacuum instead of a particle. Can you target a vacuum? If your targeting allows area-of-effect stuff then I suppose you could, but if it requires an actual perceptible target then you couldn't - a vacuum is the absence of all po...

Stahlseele wrote:DOW2 has the exact same problem as Soulstorm had.

I didn't think the voice acting in DOW2 was that bad...

I like your axis, fectin, but my objection to it would be that it doesn't have a position for simple selfishness. After all, there are plenty of people in the world who will shift their opinion on property rights vs basic needs depending on whether it's their property or their needs that are being d...

Just so we're clear, the story isn't some luddite thing. If you read past the half-baked extended intro it goes to his proposed solution. I only made it through the first page until now and I just read the second one. Solution to what? A completely unrealistic environment that will never happen? Go...

Could you even target a single proton or molecule? Human being physically can't perceive single protons - they're too small. We can detect their passage but that's an after-the-fact thing. On the other hand, if we can target stuff we can't see, then there's all sorts of stupid stuff you can do, limi...

Coin Locker Babies, by Murakami.

It's well plotted and well characterised but is difficult going because the novel assumes that you are not only intimately familiar with Japanese society, but have become alienated from it. Since I am neither, it's slow going.

I've never actually seen anyone hand in actual garbage, but broken stuff? Yeah, all the time. Some of it gets repaired, most doesn't.

I'm reading Burning Wheel Gold, and so far I rather like it. Character advancement system is stupid, but the rest seems pretty solid. Anything particularly bad or good that I missed? Also chargen has clear winners and losers. Especially for the elves. I haven't seen Gold, but from the older edition...

Semantics. You know perfectly well what I mean; in case you genuinely don't I can give you an example. You are given an assassination mission and you solemnly swear to carry it out. It turns out that the target is actually someone whose cause you agree with and your client is actually the bad guy. W...

If the Empress is the only high-level badass in the Empire then it's not unreasonable to suppose that her enemies have researched spells which are specifically designed to kill her. As such she'd be right to be cautious about walking into danger herself, because there will be lots of traps there tha...

The thing is, that if all this was was a miniatures business, Kirby would be 100% right. Games Workshop makes fantastically good miniatures. Nobody out there can seriously compete with them either in terms of sculpture or in terms of manufacturing. If this was just about making toy soldiers with big...