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wordman wordman @lemmy.ml
Posts 13
Comments 35
Recently started playing VI, have a few questions
  • Started playing recently myself. At the start, recommendations have no idea what victory strategy you are pursing, and don’t get that much better at it. They do seem somewhat OK at recommending things that will solve particular problems that city has (slow growth, lack of amenities, etc), though maybe there are better ways available to you. Or, sometimes they notice that your city geography would support a particular wonder or give bonuses to a particular zone. So, if they recommend something that seems weird, maybe check to see if you are missing some mechanical concept. (VI has a lot of obscure interlocking mechanics that can be hard to see, particularly at first.)

  • Josh Allen changed his name to avoid confusion with the other NFL Josh Allen
  • This will disappoint Scott Hanson so much.

  • What's your most unpopular opinion about music ?
  • Geezer Butler is the most important member of Black Sabbath.

  • NFL draft grades: Bears, Steelers lead best team classes as Cowboys stumble
  • These critics should drop using letter grades, in favor of Victoria Jackson’s movie rating system:

    • ★★★★: Pretty good
    • ★★★: The best
    • ★★: The worst
    • ★: Pretty good

    …and then award, like 15 stars to one team, and 3.5 to another.

  • NFL Draft
  • Haven’t been paying attention. What stupid deal has Denver done this time?

  • Ten Unanswerable Evergreen Discourses
  • Mileage varies, I guess. I’ve also been playing since the eighties (late Seventies, really). I’ve been a forever GM for most of that (not a forever DM, though). I have not been particularly active on game design forums, but still have seen every argument on this list someplace at least once a year, since at least the Forge era (so, about twenty years or so). Less often recently, maybe. Way more often earlier.

  • Are y'all watching UFL?
  • No team is near me, so I said to myself “I’ll give it a chance and root for the team with the best logo.” But then the teams were revealed and every single one of the logos is terrible.

    Is this superficial and dumb? Absolutely. But I haven’t paid attention since.

  • Ten Unanswerable Evergreen Discourses

    At the risk of triggering one or more unanswerable RPG discussions that occur over and over without end, here is a terrific post about unanswerable RPG discussions that occur over and over without end:

    https://www.indiegamereadingclub.com/indie-game-reading-club/ten-unanswerable-evergreen-discourses/

    6
    [Rapoport]Source: The NFL’s hybrid kickoff model has passed.Here is what it will look like. And will be a lot more fun.
  • Are kickoffs still a “live” ball, or a “dead” ball like punts?

  • Who is doing the most good in the world, and how?
  • Yao Ming (an NBA basketball player) has, nearly single-handedly, saved the lives of tens of millions of sharks by simply asking citizens of China to stop eating shark fin soup. Since he started doing this, the price of shark fins has tanked, and 90+ percent of people surveyed in China support a ban on selling shark fins.

  • The antitrust case against Apple
  • All of that may be true, but it bears little resemblance to the case the US actually filed against Apple. If you haven’t read the charges, you really should. They are filled with reaches that have long been rejected in similar cases, and a desire for government to broadly micromanage. One type of charge, for example, could easily be brought against any company that makes a videogame for just a single platform.

  • Here's all the dumb shit Aaron Rodgers recently said on a conspiracy theory podcast
  • Millions of New Yorkers turned MAGA without them already. Take a look at who “represents” Long Island in the House of Representatives, for example.

  • Broncos to cut Russell Wilson, take on $85M dead money hit
  • But the Browns guaranteed all the money, and Denver didn’t.

  • Modiphius conducting survey for Discworld RPG
  • If you ignore WotC as being in its own league, a handful of companies are now the “top tier” of RPG production. I’d include Mophidius there, with Paizo and Evil Hat, maybe Chaosium. Their products have extremely high production values and large (by TTRPG standards) followings.

    The are mostly known for 2d20 games (Star Trek Adventures, Dune), Dragonbane, Forbidden Lands, Mutant: Year Zero, and now publish some more classic titles (Twilight: 2000, Kult).

  • Modiphius conducting survey for Discworld RPG

    https://www.modiphius.net/en-us/pages/discworld-adventures-signup

    5
    Broncos to cut Russell Wilson, take on $85M dead money hit
  • I’d put down the Browns trade for Watson the same year as slightly worse.

  • What is something you wanted as a kid and bought now that you're an adult with disposable income?
  • I sold a bunch of 70’s and 80’s tabletop roleplaying stuff when I went to college. A few years ago, I reacquired many of those titles at collector’s prices. Not my most brilliant financial move.

  • Soft launch of Rascal News

    Rascal News is a subscriber-funded source of RPG-related independent journalism: https://www.rascal.news

    0
    Billionaire Wealth: The Biggest Winners and Losers in 2023
  • Eh. In these kinds of articles, the story is less “rich seize more wealth from others” than it is “assets already held by rich increase in ‘value’”. Almost everything in this article is “stock price go up” and, therefore, the somewhat imaginary “wealth” number of anyone holding that stock goes up. Basically, the headline could be “changes in stock price make the notional wealth of billionaires fluctuate”. Sort of a non-story to me, because everyone listed in this article could have done absolutely nothing all year, and these numbers would have changed regardless. More interesting (if only slightly) would be an article about changes to their actual assets (i.e. did they increase or decrease shares in their company, etc.). I don’t really get the “let’s keep score” for billionaires thing the media does in any case, but this article is on the more useless end of that useless pursuit.

  • Coming soon: D&D pop tarts

    D&D branding to get both more irritating and delicious.

    Anyone want to guess which six “classic” adventures will be in the Staircase thing?

    0
    Organizing TTRPG pdf collection?
  • I use Leap (https://ironicsoftware.com/leap/). One of its better features is that it works great on top of any “folder system”, or even multiple folder systems. Also uses the metadata/tagging system of the OS, so plays nice with other tools.

  • *Permanently Deleted*
  • Apparently there are mics on the tips of the goal posts.

    #thunk

  • *Permanently Deleted*
  • Permanently Deleted

  • Arcology in planning stages
  • As a Shadowrun player, I know that “arcology” is a much worse epithet than “hive city”. Well… unless it’s in Chicago.

  • Arcology in planning stages

    If you need plans for an arcology as big as “20 Empire State Buildings” for your cyberpunk game, look no further.

    4

    Hasbro lays off 1,100

    techcrunch.com Hasbro to cut 1,100 jobs despite Dungeons & Dragons thriving | TechCrunch

    Hasbro is struggling, yet its subsidiary Wizards of the Coast is booming due to franchises like Dungeons & Dragons.

    Hasbro to cut 1,100 jobs despite Dungeons & Dragons thriving | TechCrunch

    Hasbro is shedding 1,100 jobs. SEC filing doesn’t say if they will continue renting Pinkertons.

    9

    USPS to issue D&D stamps

    about.usps.com U.S. Postal Service Reveals Additional Stamps for 2024 - Newsroom - About.usps.com

    WASHINGTON, DC — Today, the U.S. Postal Service announced four new stamp subjects for 2024. This group, along with the stamps announced in October, make up only a partial list, with more to be revealed in the weeks and months ahead. All stamp designs are preliminary and subject to change.

    In its 2024 lineup of #stamps, the US Postal Service is including stamps commemorating the 50th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons.

    1

    Pink Floyd Song Reconstructed From Brain Scans

    journals.plos.org Music can be reconstructed from human auditory cortex activity using nonlinear decoding models

    Using combined regression-based decoding models and encoding analyses, this study successfully reconstructed a Pink Floyd song from recorded neural activity, revealing involvement of the superior temporal gyrus in information processing during music perception, and making an important step towards a...

    Music can be reconstructed from human auditory cortex activity using nonlinear decoding models

    Researchers who recorded direct neural signals from people listening to “Another Brick in the Wall” have reproduced a recognizable version of the song from the neural data.

    6

    Train derails in Pueblo

    apnews.com Semitruck driver killed when Colorado train derails, spilling coal cars and closing major highway

    Authorities in Colorado say the driver of a semi-trailer truck was killed when a train derailed and a bridge collapsed, spewing coal and mangled train cars across a major highway near Pueblo on Sunday.

    Semitruck driver killed when Colorado train derails, spilling coal cars and closing major highway
    0

    The EFF Provides a Lucid Analysis of the OGL

    www.eff.org Beware the Gifts of Dragons: How D&D’s Open Gaming License May Have Become a Trap for Creators

    The company that owns Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is planning to revoke the open license that has, since the year 2000, applied to a wide range of unofficial, commercial products that build on the mechanics of the game.

    Beware the Gifts of Dragons: How D&D’s Open Gaming License May Have Become a Trap for Creators

    One of the more informative posts on the current OGL curfluffle, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, written by Kit Walsh, both a senior staff attorney at the EFF and designer of Nebula- and Ennie-winning RPGs.

    0

    D&D "under monitised"

    www.dicebreaker.com Dungeons & Dragons executives think “the brand is really under monetised”

    Dungeons & Dragons' owners think the brand is "really under monetised" and have a plan to fix that in the future.

    Dungeons & Dragons executives think “the brand is really under monetised”

    D&D's corporate overlords have "ideas" about milking more money from the franchise.

    1

    The Whispering Deck

    wordmanward.itch.io The Whispering Deck by Lester Ward

    A Decktet of Many Things for Dungeon World

    The Whispering Deck by Lester Ward

    A deck of many things-style artifact for Dungeon World, based on the real-world Decktet. Creative Commons and free.

    0

    The Indicator explains the Hasbro proxy fight

    The Indicator (a daily 10 min economics podcast) explains why Hasbro is involved in a proxy fight over its Wizards of the Coast division.

    0