Search found 2699 matches

by tussock
Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:32 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Why are kobolds?
Replies: 84
Views: 17771

Re: Why are kobolds?

Hmm. Kobolds. So, their interesting history in D&D is, Tucker's Kobolds, which is to say, they epitomise that clever use of terrain, environment, equipment, and so on, can make groups of even the weakest monsters trouble for mid-level parties. This was more true in AD&D than later, of course...
by tussock
Mon Nov 08, 2021 5:15 am
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: The Biden Administration (No Lago)
Replies: 979
Views: 920203

Re: The Biden Administration (No Lago)

So they passed $1 trillion (over ten years) of their $5 trillion dollar (over five years) "lets not have the economy completely collapse, yeah?" bills. It's 1.2 over 10 years, or ... 0.6% of GDP (or less, because it's not inflation adjusted in future, of course). Which, basic lookup, the U...
by tussock
Sat Oct 30, 2021 10:28 am
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: The Biden Administration (No Lago)
Replies: 979
Views: 920203

Re: The Biden Administration (No Lago)

I was reading someone wrote about the first 100 days of FDR. He had a house and senate didn't want to vote for his New Deal. So he told them to vote for it, without compromise. Then he declared a banking holiday for two weeks, so money stopped, in the entire country, when they were in session. Presi...
by tussock
Thu Sep 09, 2021 9:23 am
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: The Biden Administration (No Lago)
Replies: 979
Views: 920203

Re: The Biden Administration (No Lago)

So the dance around the stimulus is now they've taken the 1.2 trillion out of the 4.7 trillion they'll have to cut the remaining 3.5 trillion down to 1.5 trillion because the rediculous narcissist Manchin wants to be in the news again. And also, the 1.2 trillion is now just 1 trillion and also will ...
by tussock
Thu Aug 12, 2021 1:42 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Pathfinder Is Still Bad
Replies: 8556
Views: 1748833

Re: Pathfinder Is Still Bad

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2j45d?FEAT-Weapon-Focus#11 Frankly, feats and abilities that fade into the background as you grow more powerful are, I think, good for the game. One of the largest problems facing high-level play is the complexity. if EVERYTHING you ever gained as you level up remains eq...
by tussock
Fri Aug 06, 2021 9:35 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered
Replies: 6000
Views: 1030722

Re: Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

Radiation flow after the bombs is interesting too. It follows prevailing winds and basically rains down on the first mountains it meets in that direction. Around Chernobyl the worst fallout was on the near sides of the downwind mountains. And it's spotty as, depending on where it actually rained hea...
by tussock
Sat Jul 31, 2021 10:21 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered
Replies: 6000
Views: 1030722

Re: Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

The thing about 600 kT warheads launched from Subs, is they have about three times the radius of effect of the Little Boy / Fat Man bombs dropped on Japan. That's nine times the area. But they can't hit anything mobile, so, they just erase entire cities. Which is why they're that big and not bigger,...
by tussock
Sat Jul 31, 2021 9:34 am
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: The Biden Administration (No Lago)
Replies: 979
Views: 920203

Re: The Biden Administration (No Lago)

So, midterms are gunna be, like, Dems again. By the look of it. Mostly off the back of that Republican thing where they say and do things they know are wrong just because it pisses off the Democrats, like, you know, not wearing a mask or not getting vaccinated against deadly pandemics. Because that'...
by tussock
Tue May 04, 2021 10:32 am
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: The Biden Administration (No Lago)
Replies: 979
Views: 920203

Re: The Biden Administration (No Lago)

Oh, right, can only fire and appoint the guys who could fire and appoint the guy, fair enough. Seems like defending the post office, when they need those votes to keep fascism at bay a little longer, would be a smart thing to do, but ah well. The vaccine thing is just weird. India makes a lot of the...
by tussock
Sat May 01, 2021 4:02 am
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: The Biden Administration (No Lago)
Replies: 979
Views: 920203

Re: The Biden Administration (No Lago)

I saw a weird thing about people Biden won't fire, and it was someone cheering because he'd got a few confirmations through and it meant he could now fire someone, and ... that's not how that works. Like, forever, if someone was a useless hack, they'd be fired by new admin and a temporary head would...
by tussock
Thu Apr 29, 2021 10:38 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: What were Gygax & Arneson & pals looking at for early D&D?
Replies: 28
Views: 6815

Re: What were Gygax & Arneson & pals looking at for early D&D?

Also just plain gamist inventions like the Gelatinous Cube and company is the reason the stacks of corpses and their kit vanish between dungeon expeditions, and it's invisible because that's why you didn't see it on the way out. I absolutely love that. I never thought of that and think that's reall...
by tussock
Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:08 pm
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Is DnD the most popular because of ease?
Replies: 31
Views: 8364

Re: Is DnD the most popular because of ease?

D&D is the most popular because it's the best RPG, by a fucking mile, for most of it's life. Not 4e, obviously, but the rest of them, like, Pathfinder got worse the more the diverged from 3e, but while it was still basically 3e D&D it was best too. You can argue 2nd edition AD&D was a wo...
by tussock
Tue Jan 26, 2021 8:18 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: What were Gygax & Arneson & pals looking at for early D&D?
Replies: 28
Views: 6815

There's also the original Appendix N in 1st edition. Inspiration for all of the fantasy work I have done stems directly from the love my father showed when I was a lad, for he spent many hours telling me stories he made up as he went along, tales of cloaked old men who could grant wishes, of magic r...
by tussock
Sat Feb 29, 2020 12:26 pm
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: Random Thoughts and Musings...
Replies: 78
Views: 23974

For me, Mild Autisom, mostly ADHD. Which, mostly it turns out everyone's been under-diagnosing ADHD forever. "Things are never that big." ADHD commonly comes with this ... thing called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, where it's fucking hard work to not perceive every little side glace as ...
by tussock
Mon Feb 24, 2020 2:12 am
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: Medical Questions I'd Like Answered...
Replies: 968
Views: 201994

It's normal to spend the day in a daze when over-sleeping. It's normal to over-sleep if you go long stretches of being woken by an alarm. It's normal to need woken by an alarm if you don't take time to wind down and go to sleep before you get very tired each day. [hr] Vaccinations work when the expe...
by tussock
Mon Feb 24, 2020 1:02 am
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: Random Thoughts and Musings...
Replies: 78
Views: 23974

The future seems like a place with no more fossil fuels used at all and obviously solar power and any form of storage (including neat stuff like heat in salt), plus a little bit of biofuels for awkward stuff like farm machinery and ocean-going ships. That's the future, at some point. The energy rate...
by tussock
Wed Feb 05, 2020 7:32 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered
Replies: 6000
Views: 1030722

Given a heartbreaker close enough to 3e that "class feature vs. spell" is a meaningful distinction, the only real differences between a Turn Undead class feature powered by its own separate resource and a turn undead spell-that's-not-a-spell powered by its own separate resource is that th...
by tussock
Tue Feb 04, 2020 5:33 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: How does your heartbreaker handle... Damage?
Replies: 29
Views: 11149

Just a casual vote against death spirals in RPGs involving characters doing things that would trigger them. Unless it's supposed to be a form of avoidable game ending fail state, and even then. It's just that people keep wanting to do it, and it's not even particularly realistic for people plus adre...
by tussock
Tue Feb 04, 2020 4:20 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered
Replies: 6000
Views: 1030722

2) Multiple resources. The nice thing about having Turn Undead and Wild Shape as class features instead of spells is that they come out of separate pools from your spells, so (A) you don't have to choose between the two, not even to the extent that a cleric or druid has to choose whether to sacrifi...
by tussock
Tue Feb 04, 2020 3:22 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered
Replies: 6000
Views: 1030722

With quibbling at the margins (leadership, for example, or general fightiness), [skills should not scale with level]. In a level-based system, you get whole new tiers of power, and at those higher tiers, skills don't scale, they expire . Efforts to maintain the relevance of lockpicking are the most...
by tussock
Tue Feb 04, 2020 1:57 am
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: What's Dark Matter, any new theories?
Replies: 13
Views: 6747

Challenging otherwise stable theories is how they get better. Quantum theory took decades to get anywhere, and did so because brilliant people kept challenging it until, basically, people ran out of ideas about how to challenge it that were falsifiable and had a mechanism for action. -- Anyway, it's...
by tussock
Thu Jan 23, 2020 1:45 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Favorite Official Campaign Setting?
Replies: 34
Views: 10150

I do not know how Tussock got Ebberron so wrong. The setting is explictly a 1920s/1930s situtation where the last war ended because everybody got scared shitless of being killed by the growing number of magic super weapons and all the factions feel like they would have won with just one more offens...
by tussock
Fri Jan 17, 2020 11:24 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: What if your PHB had actions instead of spells?
Replies: 39
Views: 7111

The idea of referencing 1000 actions, that might in turn reference further actions, to get every fucking thing in the game done is a literal nightmare. Have none of you seen people stall out trying to choose which spell to cast from their list of 20 prepared spells? That's two layer chunking they st...
by tussock
Fri Jan 17, 2020 10:42 am
Forum: In My Humble Opinion...
Topic: Favorite Official Campaign Setting?
Replies: 34
Views: 10150

So Greyhawk is best for historical interest, like the fact Gygax did not think it possible to publish Castle Greyhawk because his megadungeon was way too fucking big for an actual book. Almost everything about it tells you stuff about why the game got like it did. Because of Living Greyhawk, there's...
by tussock
Thu Jan 16, 2020 12:04 pm
Forum: MPSIMS
Topic: [Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...
Replies: 3918
Views: 994767

Did see that about an hour before the shoot down, fox was running some opinion dude who was shouting at the screen that the US was on it's way with B52s and that the mullahs had better find a cave to hide in RIGHT NOW because bombs and shit. Which, like, it's broadcast around the world, Iran heard t...