Zagorath

Zagorath , 2 hours ago

Just eyeballing it the organisms looks maybe 2/3rds the size of rivers?

Zagorath , 4 hours ago

Do you mean the empty half of the cable? Because the plug itself has the empty half on the bottom.

Usually easier to look for the USB logo or company's branded logo on top. The bottom is usually blank or containing legal info. The bottom also has the zig-zaggy join in the metal.

Zagorath , 3 hours ago

Also a plug is on the cable

Maybe this is an American English thing, because to me the plug is the socket. The two words are synonyms. Like I'd talk about the electricity plug in the wall.

Zagorath , 10 hours ago (edited 9 hours ago)

Never buy early access on the hope that the game will get better. Buy it if it's at least good enough to justify its current price tag right now.

Zagorath , 9 hours ago

But then for some reason, another company went back and restarted publishing the old lines

I think it was the same company. White Wolf published World of Darkness games using its Storyteller system from 1991 until 2004. They then made the move to Chronicles of Darkness (a retroactive title the only came about in 2015, until then they were also called World of Darkness officially, known to fans as "new World of Darkness") in 2004. CoD changed some of the lore around and drastically cut back on how detailed and complex the metanarrative was.

CoD used their new "Storytelling" system, and did not perform very well commercially. Probably some fans didn't like it much, but mainly they decided to stop selling in stores so there was no discoverability. During the CoD era, White Wolf still published some WoD material, such as the 20th anniversary editions.

The most important detail here though comes in 2015–2018. Up until this point White Wolf has been bought and sold a couple of times, most recently by CCP. In 2015 they are bought by Paradox Interactive. In 2018 they release VtM 5th edition. In response to allegations of some very problematic material in V5, Paradox dissolves White Wolf and brings WoD production into Paradox Interactive.

I think that only Vampire, Hunter, and Werewolf are currently supported in the latest edition of Storyteller, but I may have missed something.

It's true that Onyx Path as a separate licensee has published books for White Wolf/CCP/Paradox. But they've done 20th Anniversary, CoD, and V5 stuff. The actual decision to go back to WoD was White Wolf/Paradox's.

Zagorath , 7 hours ago

So, my context here is that I've never played any WoD or CoD games. But a couple of years back I was almost part of a group that was going to play a V5 campaign before it fell through. (I forget the timeline...might even have been December 2019 or thereabouts...) So I bought and have read through the V5 Core Rulebook. I obviously don't have earlier editions to compare it to, but I thought the system itself seemed really elegant. The kind of beautifully simple game design that first attracted me to D&D 5th edition. (Unfortunately having not played V5, I couldn't say whether I would eventually get tired of that simplicity in the same way I got tired of D&D 5e.)

From what I understand, they seem to have changed the metanarrative quite a lot from previous editions. Seemingly for the worse, according to a lot of people who really liked the old lore. Which might mean it's for the better (relative to old WoD) if you preferred CoD?

Zagorath , 9 hours ago

The way it's phrased in the quotes, this seems more like a reference to their ridiculous conspiracy theory that he won in 2020 and is thus technically the president today, rather than an assertion that he'll run in 2028 even if he wins this year.

Zagorath , 4 hours ago

Just means the individual tyres are 33% more expensive!

Zagorath , 21 hours ago

You do realise this is being posted to make fun of Zac and Chris, and not the people in the park, right?

Zagorath , 21 hours ago

The talk about AI is stupid. It's a tool.

The talk about the IMPLICATIONS of AI, and who uses it to automate what, at the cost of who, is the actual argument to be had.

Hear, hear.

Zagorath , 21 hours ago

The explanation feels very much like a "just so" story to me, as much as I want to believe it.

Zagorath , 3 hours ago

Try to keep non de-sexed cat

I'mma stop you right there. No, don't do that.

Zagorath , 1 day ago

The Jungle Book, also known as The Jungle Book

Thanks.

Zagorath , 1 day ago

Image seems to have been deleted. Here's a re-upload.

https://aussie.zone/pictrs/image/0ce96f08-4322-4541-b5d2-b59e8e811b04.png

Zagorath , 1 day ago

I actually don't think it's a very good guide.

It's laid out by room, but at least for me that's not how tasks work. I don't think "yes, I must vacuum the lounge now" or "today I must mop the bathroom". Instead it's more like "now I'm going to mop the house" or "time to vacuum". Because the hardest part of any of these chores is the initial hurdle of getting started, but once you've started it's just logical to do the whole house.

Plus, the guide would be enhanced by a place where tasks can be physically checked off, so this person can see for themselves very clearly which tasks have and have not been done in the allotted timeframe. (They would have to have a specific day of the month/week where they always rub out the ticks.)

Zagorath , 1 day ago

Yup. See my top-level comment.

Zagorath OP , 1 day ago

the speeds that ebikes can hit now

They're legally capped at 25 km/h, even if the technology exists to make them faster than that. It's a big speed boost up hill, but makes no difference down hill and it's roughly equal (or even a negative for strong cyclists) on the flat.

I don't think speed is really the right thing to look at when talking about the advantage of ebikes. Instead, it's the ability to travel with less physical effort, especially when going on hilly routes or carrying larger loads.

(And as a minor side note, I really wish we used the 20 mph speed cap used in places that still use mediaeval measurements. 32 km/h is still a very safe speed, but would be noticeably faster.)

Zagorath OP , 1 day ago

Personally I think 45 km/h is an excessive and potentially unsafe speed.

Zagorath OP , 1 day ago

Yeah with a 25 km/h limit, I would probably be looking into how to disable the limiter. If the limit was 32 km/h that would be much less likely.

But it's only hypothetical for me, as I've never owned an ebike.

Zagorath , 1 day ago

Off topic, but does this show get good? I love her standup, but after watching 2 or 3 episodes of this show I found it painfully unfunny, and not at all like the late-night show that it was billed as.

Zagorath , 6 hours ago

for all of us non Brits

It's funny you should say that. It's American, as you've learnt. I'm neither American nor British, but to me the show does actually seem more similar to a format of show that's very popular in Britain, but not so common in America. The panel show. Think QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats, or Would I Lie To You. Something that looks like a game show, but where the main purpose is really improv comedy and banter, more than actually winning the game.

The problem is for me, the episodes I've seen of After Midnight have just been much, much less funny than the typical WILTY or Cats does Countdown (and I don't even particularly like Catsdown).

Zagorath , 1 day ago

My computer is telling me it's 13° outside, wtf? It's not even winter yet.

My outside thermometer is a milder 15°, but that's still shit.

Zagorath , 1 day ago

If I say no, are you going to pick the next most recent named ancestor of the chicken, and keep repeating until someone says yes?

Zagorath , 3 days ago

I'm not sure that a pathologist or dentist are the kinds of doctors they're gonna need.

Well, maybe the dentist.

Zagorath , 3 days ago

I can't help but be reminded of Why Cars Rarely Crash into Buildings in the Netherlands.

Zagorath , 3 days ago

Valves aren't needed to "sound too good", they're needed to get more notes. Without valves, you've still got the harmonic series. Any piece played on bugle could also be played on trumpet. And the majority of classical compositions up until the late 19th century. (All classical compositions until the early 19th century.)

Zagorath , 2 days ago

Probably not. I'm not a brass player or a marine biologist but as I understand it the way a brass player's embouchure works would not be replicable by a dolphin's blowhole (it's not just "send air through the tube", it's more like blowing a raspberry). They wouldn't be able to play any note, let alone different notes.

Zagorath OP , 3 days ago

I dunno about "higher level" maths, but there is one bit where you're asked to solve a simple year 8–level algebra equation (which is still a much higher level than any other RPG I've ever played asks you to do). It's also in one of the more explicitly NSFW parts of the system.

Specifically, you have to solve for y: (BT – 80)^2^ = –4y + 120, where BT is a number arrived at in an earlier step, using (CM / CV/A ) × 100. I will not be defining what CM and CV/A are in this forum in order to keep the comments SFW.

Zagorath OP , 3 days ago

Part of me agrees, but another part of me says...there are far too many rules in this about sex...including illicit forms thereof...for me to want to play this with anyone I know IRL.

And also no part of me wants to spend the multiple hours this would probably take to roll up a character. I Googled looking for digital character generators, and they supposedly used to exist, but the official FATAL website no longer exists.

Zagorath OP , 3 days ago

Oh don't worry. There are a lot of tables in this system.

Zagorath OP , 3 days ago

Yes to circumference, but no to damage. Ripping is a possibility the book discusses, but this formula is for quite the opposite.

Zagorath OP , 2 days ago

Well, that's not exactly surprising…

Zagorath , 4 days ago

I think my most intense one was probably from the very first campaign I ever played (after a couple of sessions experience in a kinda ad-hoc fashion). D&D 4th edition.

We were a rather big group of (I think) 6 players plus DM. The main campaign was fairly standard. DM set us up with some prophecy stuff and we set about fulfilling it.

Everything was going pretty normally, until I got the weird sense that there was something else going on. Outside of session I spoke to the DM to have my character try and investigate. It turned out that weird sense was correct. Another player was setting up their own schemes between sessions. So I started setting up my own schemes, and roping other players into them.

It's the kind of thing that looking back on it now, most would probably consider a major red flag. There was no Session 0 or any out-of-character discussion about doing these kinds of things. It could have been incredibly toxic. But we loved it. It added a whole extra layer to everything we were doing during the sessions, as well as giving us the ability to converse with the DM and each other to play more of the game asynchronously between sessions.

In the penultimate session, we defeat the BBEG on another plane, and then arrive back in our world. Another week of last-minute scheming, before the actual final session was a massive PvP battle where the player openly turned against the rest of the party. One of the other players unexpectedly (to me at least) turned and joined them, as well as some NPCs on both sides. "Intense" is the perfect word to describe that session and the build up to it. That physical, heart-pumping feeling the same as when you're hyping yourself up for your first time trying a dangerous sport or something similar.

We ended up pushing back and winning the encounter for the good guys, but didn't actually kill or capture the betraying PC. They fled, and their player took over as DM for our next campaign.

Zagorath , 4 days ago

!nottheonion

Zagorath , 4 days ago

I know this is a controversial take, but I really intensely do not like Half Life.

I have issues with it from a narrative perspective. I have no idea who it is I'm fighting or why. It feels like an incredibly forced "oh, we need an excuse to throw some baddies at the player" premise.

But the main problem I had was mechanical. It's just not a fun game to play. The gunplay was fine, but then it forces itself to throw a bunch of puzzle and platforming mechanics at you, and just…why? It's so, so terrible at them. Running up to the edge and jumping will more often than not really in you falling because of a misalignment in perceived location and where the game's engine says you are. Boxes, which you have to move around to solve the puzzling, fly around at a million miles per minute, making the fine control needed to successfully solve the puzzles very, very difficult. And ladders…don't even get me started about ladders.

I couldn't bring myself to finish the first Half Life, let alone start on the sequel.

Zagorath , 4 days ago

I'm not a big shooter player. I had played a fair bit of Battlefield 2 multiplayer, the CoD4 campaign multiple times, as well as games like Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the first game with that title...) and Mass Effect (I think at the time I had played only 1 and 2).

I actually thought I had played the Source version of it, but my Steam history says otherwise. I was playing the OG version, in 2014.

Zagorath , 4 days ago

Sure, and I am in no way suggesting that it was a bad game in its day (especially now that I know at least one of the issues I had with it was a bug introduced long after the fact). But I am suggesting that it doesn't hold up nearly as well as some people like to insist it does. It's the "Seinfeld is unfunny" trope, except that that relies on the idea that people today don't find Seinfeld very funny; the difference is that I regularly see people saying that yes, Half Life is still an excellent game if you play it today.

And for what it's worth, the game I have put the most hours into on Steam (and by 2x the 2nd place game—which is a more recent entry in the same franchise) was released just 10 months after the original Half Life. Granted, I'm playing on a 2019 remaster with upgraded graphics and some new QoL features, but it's the same basic game, and had a vibrant community still playing on the 1999 version all the way up until the '19 remaster. It's a game that I think really does hold up very well today, albeit in an entirely different genre.

Zagorath , 4 days ago

Thtat's the one! (And my #2 is AoE4. AoM is #3, and AoE3 is #5. All these considering only Steam play time.)

Zagorath , 3 days ago

Haha yeah, when I was young I played a fair amount of Age games, but never playing them in their normal intended fashion. A lot of using the cheats, playing the campaigns on easy mode, and some custom scenarios that largely don't use actual economy management that's at the core of the game.

Only got into the more competitive side of the game after the DE release in 2019.

Zagorath , 4 days ago

Yes, of course there do.

Some smaller companies are run by people still in touch with humanity.

Some bigger companies might see the writing on the wall and pre-empt the vote as a tactic to gain public goodwill.

Zagorath , 1 day ago

Sometimes it means "I did a thing in the past and don't recognise the ways in which it has changed over time to become worse today than it was in my day".

Zagorath , 4 days ago

Honestly it seems to just be the artist's style.

https://aussie.zone/pictrs/image/44f45a9f-73b3-4be8-a166-c6ffb74c2638.png

Sounds like she's just having a hissy fit.

Zagorath , 4 days ago

Kinda reminds me of that messed up restoration of a painting of Jesus.

Zagorath , 5 days ago

Telling a mod of the community you're in to "blow me"? Brave move.

Zagorath , 3 days ago

I'm willing to entertain the idea that he may not have intended to whistleblow in order to reveal war crimes.

But if that's the case, why couldn't the government have relied upon a fair trial to establish his guilt? Even if he is guilty, he is owed due process, and being restricted from presenting necessary evidence is a violation of that due process.