You’re way too optimistic.

I’m putting my money on Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play.

2001

I believe we didn’t invade Iraq until 2003.

Although, curiously enough, Iran helped us do it.

Doubly ironic, given that Bush Sr was so instrumental in beefing up the Iraqi military ten years before the '91 invasion… for the purpose of invading its neighbors. (https://archive.is/HwX3A)

What is it about hardline reactionary Islamic governments getting baited by American neoconservatives to spin around, show us their backs, and point to the spot a knife would sink in most deeply?

I’d love to see how Microsoft is gonna convince those cheap fucks that this is the correct path forward

I suspect we’re going to see some kind of sweeping compatibility issues in the next few years. Possibly a really ugly virus rips through the business community to scare people into switching.

What are u even discussing about guys…

Doomerism

I guess you’ll just need to convert to proprietary cloud services

Turns out the plan was to kill a bunch of people you hate.

rules lawyers are as happy as a pig in mud

In my experience, rules lawyers get a certain special high from remembering some obscure piece of info and digging it out at the right moment. It’s their own special kind of magic. And - from time to time - it does make the game better, because you’ve got a guy who can say “Actually there IS a rule for jumping off a cliff, grabbing onto a big vine, and swinging onto the back of the rampaging Wyvern”.

But when the DM thinks they know the rules and the Player thinks they know the rules, and then they spend half an hour arguing over the results of a dice roll, it is my experience that neither of them walk away from the table happier than when they started. The best you can ever get is the table stakes and the worst you get is feeling robbed or cheated.

Fate is definitely among my top games. I recommend it to everyone who brings up gaming, but I never seem to be able to get into a group with it these days. I personally hate d&d for how it not only is the name everyone knows, but somehow has cemented itself as the only game people are willing to play.

The d20 system is pretty quick to pick up but contains enough depth to allow for wide variations in setting and style. So many of the variants are just right there at surface level. Nobody has to work hard to make fireballing a goblin legion or sneak attacking a mind flayer cooler than it already is.

FATE is perhaps too vanilla and really relies on the players/DMs to pick up the slack in their descriptions. The fundamental problem with a very story-based game is where you go with it when other people at the table just aren’t exciting enough to keep it compelling. Easy to say “I like this system over that system” when what you really liked was the group of Theater Kids (or just the friends you knew with a good set of in-jokes) that made the game pop.

I know a few friends who swear by Call of Cthulhu as a system. But their DM is a phenomenal amateur horror writer. So, I feel like it isn’t the system that’s doing a lot of the work.

Rogue: “Hope you like your STAKE medium RARE!”

Vampire: “Can’t believe after 500 years I’m going out to a bad pun.”

Cleric: Winding up to club him with a Holy Cannoli

Twelve years ago, when XP released, there was legitimately a decision to be made what with nine distinct versions of the OS available. That still hasn’t stopped even in the modern day. So I could see people discussing exactly which version of Win10/11 they needed and then recommending others based on their experience.

But it’s sort of like the BMW that comes with a subscription to heated seats and ABS. Like, why would you subject yourselves to this kind of abuse in an OS?

“How likely are you to recommend putting your hand up to the elbow in this wood chipper?”

Like, if you’re in the business of building PCs? I definitely understand swapping build tips with friends and colleagues. Even strictly within the “No Linux Allowed” space, there’s no shortage of online tutorials and consultants recommending this or that version of Microsoft.

But Win10 is going away and Win11 is so fucking bad…

makes everything turn into the rules lawyer heaven hell.

👹

As a personal experience, mutants&masterminds is just, so, horrible about the arguments for how powers interact, and they didn’t help by mixing fuzzy and binary rules

I’ve never played. But if that’s the Palladium version and it’s adjacent to Rifts… ye-gods. Why even have game mechanics at all? Just give us the setting material and a bag full of random dice mixed with cheetos and Chucky Cheese tokens.

I remember people excitedly snapping up the d20 version of Exalted back in their 2e, almost entirely because they adored the world but despised the White Wolf mechanics. Also seen some decent mileage taking games like this to FATE or Big Eyes Small Mouth, just because it does become much more of a narrative auction than a dice game.

an open conspiracy is still a conspiracy.

US military hegemony isn’t a conspiracy, it’s a popular public policy

NDAA authorizing almost a trillion dollars to the military industrial complex

Congress authorizes it. I guess you could just put “Congress” on the list. Or maybe “The Pentagon”.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have died by US bombing in the last fifty years.

With Iran, Syria, and Yemen you could probably get to 100k in one or two years.

Nevermind our airstrikes across Latin America, the various African states, and our collaborations with Israel in Gaza.

Hell, the US can take credit for quite a few kills in Ukraine thanks to our long standing policy of playing both ends against the middle.

But you don’t get all that out of “The NDAA exists”. We’ve been passing NDAAs since The Korean War without hitting this level of mass slaughter.

“I cast invisible”

“The hydra takes an AoO”

Queue from the top

It’s the same argument. The fundamental problem is that magic as a system doesn’t play well with rules as a concept

I tend to find an 2:1 or 3:1 combat/non-combat gives people a good mix of the action/adventure elements and the high drama. Combat just tends to take longer than drama, so even when you try to minimize it, you can often find yourself in a time-suck.

I also tend to feel that any “withering encounter” should resolve as soon as the players are more-or-less assured of victory (like, 2-3 turns, unless things go disastrously wrong for the players). Big center-piece boss battles can take longer, but need some kind of high drama element (exploding volcano, NPC dangling off a cliff, evil wizard powering up a death ray, etc) that (a) gives players a puzzle or drama point to resolve and (b) gives someone an opportunity to do something passionate or wacky (swinging in on a chandelier, flinging themselves on a hand grenade, asking their beau to marry them in the middle of a sword fight).

Any encounter that’s just “roll the dice, pass the turn” is a waste of everyone’s time, IMHO.

your turn should be no more than 1 minute at the longest

“I cast Invisibility”

“You can’t”

“Yes I can”

“No, you can’t, you’re in the Antimagic Field”

“No, I’m not. I’m on the edge of the field. Look at the table.”

“There’s still a corner of the field in the square.”

“Then I don’t stand in that corner.”

“The rules say it doesn’t matter.”

“No they don’t. It has to occupy at least 40% of the square.”

“Yes it does. Look, its right here in the DM’s guide.”

“That’s the 4.32 manual. You need to check the rules updates from 4.71”

“I’m not using 4.71 rules.”

“You referenced a 4.82 rule just a turn ago!”

“No I didn’t, that was a house rule.”

“That’s not anywhere in the house rule guide! I was just reading it before I cast my spell.”

“Well, I sent out an email two months ago.”

“GUYS! Just make a decision and move ON!”

“Okay, fine. I take a five foot step and cast Invisibility.”

“My hydra gets an AoO. I roll a 43 and deal 290 points of damage. Your wizard dies.”

“THIS IS BULLSHIT!”

sorcerer DM

I’ll also spot you that turn one is generally basic bitch shit.

It’s turn seven, when the wizard has gone through six prior Save or Sucks only to find out the DM has introduced another creature on which none of them work that they’re fumbling around for options.

by level 10 you should already know what spells you took and what they do at minimum

As often as not, the control wizard is trying to figure out if they can drop the AoE template to just hit the bad guys. Blaster Casters tend to have less of a problem because every turn is “Does it have fire resistance? Yes: Magic Missile / No: Scorching Ray”

The really annoying wizards are the Summoners, because “it’s my turn so let me add another 1d4+1 turdlings to the battle field and take 6 attacks with the gumbas currently out here”.

I don’t think “pernicious” would describe the NDAA, no.

I mean, some of them are vague to the point of being banal. The NDAA is just the bi-annual Congressional requirement to reauthorize US military operations abroad.

Why would anyone have that marked out as a conspiracy theory on the level of MK Ultra or Operation Northwoods? No reason you’d recognize the acronym as such.