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The Shadowrun Trilogy is currently free on GOG.

It's happening: https://chrisavellone.medium.com/ending-silence-c48e86f7c523 https://chrisavellone.medium.com/its-come-to-this-chris-avellone-2fe5db836746

I shall critical race theoreticate your butt

Not his best writing. 1/10

Looks like Falcom bought the fan-made mega translation for Trails From Azure and Trails To Zero so the entire series will officially be out in English.

I like those 80s Boris Vallejo covers for crap fantasy movies. If only the content fit the cover.

Heh, Im asleep before my head hit the pillow.

I guess I can’t rule out a psychological cause but I have had a life that has been blessedly free of emotional trauma. Great parents, drama free childhood, etc. marriages didn’t work out so well but I have a clean conscience on both of them. I’m very active most days but I don’t have any kind of real exercise regimen. I may give that a try next.

No, I used to start my days with exercise to help wake up but now it's more of a late afternoon thing because that's when I start fading. That said, I generally sleep better when I work out consistently but definitely not always.

we got kinda severe insomnia and have had such for years. some is nerve pain related, but the reality is we had troubles with sleeping before the nerve pain issues. as such we got some sympathy for gd's plight. only two things help us decrease (not eliminate) our insomnia: 1) schedule do not take naps even if you are exhausted. do everything possible to develop a sleep schedule, and is best to try and sleep nighttime. 2) exercise regular intense exercise helps. helps. is not a magic fix, and is not as if 90 minutes o' weights followed by 45-50 minutes of cardio you send you immediate to your pillow neither. don't workout immediate before planned sleep. have never had much luck with diet suggestions and am admitted terrible 'bout the schedule thing in part 'cause we get frustrated the first few days o' trying to reestablish a schedule. inevitably we need face a few o' those interminable sleepless nights o' increasing consternation as we toss and turn and stare at the inside o' our eyelids and listen to our own breathing... doing the seeming ineffectual breathing exercises we were taught. takes days before the schedule kinda kicks in and begins working and am kinda going nuts before such begins to help. is unlikely to be a silver bullet solution. exercise and a schedule may even make gd's insomnia worse. good luck. HA! Good Fun! ps am kinda lucky opioids have so little impact on us. 'cause if taking 'em helped us get to sleep, we would use at even abuse levels.

Shadowrun 3 tripack (return, dragonfall, honk kong) on GOG as freebie. Dragonfall is an interesting tactical crpg. The other two had less magic in my opinnion, or just miss the combination of freshness and refinement.

Oh thanks, I was going to watch this but forgot.

21:30-04:45 Then my body naturally wakes up without an alarm.

I'm not Zor, but I do remember reading that the virus can survive up to 72 hours on hard surfaces. Which means, if an infected person touched e.g. a door handle, the virus can be transferred to the hand of the next person who touches it. Hence, wash hands and don't touch your face to help prevent it from getting entry into your body. Edit: Washing your hands only reduces the risk. To be sure, use hand sanitizer which kills the virus Edit2: Door handle is just an example, think stuff like shopping trolleys, faucets, water taps, railings etc.

Well, Sacred Immolation is quite good... the self damage is very high but with enough healing you can survive rel. easily (esp. if not tanking at the same time). Also it can run while you are casting an invocation at the same time which is cool action economy. Can't do that with more invocations. Maybe check out "Their Champion Braved the Horde alone". It gives you "energized" which will let you interrupt all enemies you land a crit against. This includes the pulses of Sacred Immolation which might crit enemies, offensive chants that may crit the enemy with every cycle and of course also your weapon attacks. It can be very good if you combine those things and disable enemies by simply landing crits/interrupts "on the fly" as secondary effect.

One problem: Blunderbuss + Estoc means you'll only have pierce weapon damage. Unless you plan to unlock another weapon set (like with Fleshmender or Arms Bearer where you could then put a Pollaxe or Morning Star for example) I'd recommend to use another setup that allows to switch between pierce and non-pierce damage. Else you would have to unequip/equip weapons before encounters - and you'd need metaknowledge in order to predict which foes will be pierce immune/highly resistant and which not. Mortars could be an alternative to "normal" blunderbusses because they do pierce/slash. Eccea's Arcane Blaster (pistol though) could be good. Or instead of Estocs pick Pollaxe, Great Sword or Morning Star. Estocs have awesome PEN (and nice uniques) and you can circumvent their weakness with knowledge about upcoming enemies - but if you haven't that knowledge and then meet a bunch of Skeletal or even Risen dudes and can't do anything with your weapons it feels quite frustrating. Better be prepared for that. If you want to be a debuffer also look at the Invocation "Ben Fidel's Neck was Exposed". The -10 defenses that comes with the frighten affliction (which is a lot more useful than in PoE1) stacks with other debuffs. Also there's no immunity to it which can be very good against some very affliction-resistant foes.

My own two all time favourite games are available for free on GOG (they used to be available on the website of the guy who did the PC port/conversion)... Some may find them a bit dated by now, but for those of us with rose tinted nostalgia goggles, these are still the ultimate mix of rpg, strategy and grand strategy (and Mike Singleton is an unrecognized bloody genius) https://www.gog.com/game/the_lords_of_midnight https://www.gog.com/game/doomdarks_revenge

Sounds like Melrose Place

Go with Herald, Lay on Hands, Ancient Memory, Mercy and Kindness and Exalteded Endurance, Lethandria's Devotion, Sasha's Singing Scimitar, Physiker's Belt, Practiced Healer.

Enlightened Agony doesn't stack with Turning Wheel. However, it can make sure you won't drop below +5 INT (when under 5 wounds). But I wouldn't use an Ability Point for that given how easily a Nalpasca gains wounds. Melee Monk with Enduring Dance would only make sense if you could make sure you wouldn't get hit much. Like if you were playing a ranged Monk - or if you were playing one with very high defenses but no tanking responsibilities or something like that. Or if you focused your build on Blade Turning. Soul Mirror makes most sense with high deflection. Imo it's pretty useful in solo runs but not that much in party runs (because in a party often it's not the Monk who attracts ranged fire in the first place). Brand Enemy is a neverending DoT ability which is cheap, very fast and most importantly an auto-hit(!). That makes it very useful in certain encounters. Sworn Rival is nice as well (especially for a Goldpact Knight who can get a refund for his +4 AR) but in parties limited Zeal isn't that big of a deal. It can be very powerful to inflict neverending burn damage to a whole bunch of enemies in a few seconds with 100% success. It can help you to ein encounters where you'd normally have a hard time hitting enemies and so on. Note that Brand Enemy is useless against Ironclads/Steelclads and other fire immune enemies and really counterproductive against certain enemies like Flame Nagas and Dorudugan (who heal from fire DMG). Against fire vulnerable enemies (hello Beast of Winter) it's great most of times. Reaching good PEN can make the difference between "meh" and "great" though. Sworn Rival is more like a no-fuzz "everyday usage" upgrade while Brand Enemy is more situational but can make a big difference in hard fights. Mortification otS: yes, overkill. I'd even say Lesser Wounds is overkill (if you use Hylea's Talons for gloves and later Sacred Immolation it's def. overkill at that point imo). Resolve you go all-in (increasing defensive returns) or nothing imo. But it can really help with Sacred Immolation's self damage. On the other hand Monk has other tools to shorten the duration of hostile effects - like Clarity of Agony - and there are some items that help. So maybe I'd still tank RES to 3 if I wasn't to max it in the first place. I value Clarity oA over Righteous Soul since the first one always works while the second is situational - but on the other hand it's wound-driven active vs. passive so I would be torn. Also because RS completey nullifies all attacks that are tagged as poison/disease. So for example stuff like Plague of Insects or even direct damage like Noxious Burst wouldn't affect you at all iirc. I guess I would like to have both?

Ascendant is not that great for solo fighter/cipher, you're much better off going Soulblade. (Ascendant is great in a party with SoT)

Stoic Steel is very good. You should choose Swift Flurry at creation, skip Force of Anguish and pick Righteous Soul later. Also you should drop Improved Critical and pick Lesser Wounds instead.

which reminds us we need second dose of the shingles vaccine as am kinda in the temporal window for the next jab. the side effects of the first shot were a bit unsettling. we do not drink, but am serious considering taking it up contemporaneous with getting our second shingles dose. regardless, if the upcoming post shot symptoms are anything like the first, we will not be sleeping that night either. HA! Good Fun!

not specific directed at shady but we thought we stated the exercise ain't meant as a soporific or some kinda natural sleeping pill. again, do not exercise immediate before planning to go to sleep. however, if you have insomnia, then a regular exercise regimen may help. much like the sleep schedule, the exercise should be regular but it should occur at some point during the day not proximate to bedtime. curiously, work to point of exhaustion, even if such work includes physical activity, doesn't necessarily help us personal. spend your day on a roof doing repairs is not same as exercise meant to stave off insomnia even if is more taxing than whatever exercise plan you might devise. work fatigue is somehow different from whatever benefits you get from exercise... and white collar fatigue is definite not helping us. spend a sleepless night preparing for court followed by a day o' wrangling with clients and counsel and judges is at least as taxing as any workout we ever suffered but spend weeks doing such over and over and over again were guaranteeing we would reach the cadaverous and haunted full scale insomnia where we literal arrived at the stage where we felt/feel like we is perpetual disembodied and kinda piloting our body through daily activities from just outside our self... difficult to describe. HA! Good Fun!

The best nights sleep I've ever had were all either at the end of a physical or emotional trial.

I wasn't being serious, I'm not that insane.

ooops yea yes. both my bellower and skald builds dual-wielded weapons and stayed up at the front. they weren't built to be tanks so wouldn't be able to survive dedicated enemy attention, but they weren't terribly squishy (though i did invest a bit in the gear and making sure i pick up tough; i play on PotD). you could easily do a tank build, but i would stick with small shield (or else invocations get acc penalties), pick up the silver knight chant, and be either a bellower or troubadour. Skald really wants dual-wielding or single-weapon style to maximize on crits. i actually had a short run--abandoned for now--where i was building tekehu into kind of a DD+tank hybrid using hatchet/small shield plus silver knight to help tank and survive and it wasn't bad. in such a setup i would actually put more points into resolve and give up a few--one each from perception and intellect and maybe a couple from might. the incidental loss in net damage from each of those points may be made up for by the increasing returns you get from higher resolve on top of the other tanky stuff you'd be doing.

Sounds like you hate freedom.

Yeah they should be nutjob anarchists instead right. Also, speaking of North Korea https://nypost.com/2018/06/02/inside-my-haunting-year-as-the-first-american-to-study-in-north-korea/ It takes a certain courage to travel to North Korea four times, millennials don't screw around with international political piss flinging BS. I mean I wouldn't mind traveling to Beijing or Shanghai as an expat but North Korea...yeah I'm not that brave.

It’s hard to describe. It’s like you’re exhausted but not sleepy. Where you are when it happens doesn’t really matter. I don’t sleep any better in the bed than I do on the couch or a sleeping bag in the woods. The other strange thing is it comes and goes. I’ll go through periods where it last for weeks and then may go months before there’s another bout of it. It does not appear to be correlated with any life event. I’m not under any more stress right now than I ever am. It kind of bothers me that I’m not working right now but I do have a sufficient income from my numerous business ventures I really don’t need to. My living expenses are minimal. this is certainly something bourbon would help with blood but I saw my doctor last year he told me I was pre-diabetic. Which I was kind of surprised to hear because I am in pretty good physical condition. But I do have a family history of type two. So I cut way back on carbohydrates and seriously cut back on sugar. Whiskey is both.

I gave it a try, but noticed just now that there is a headspace in the convo portrait. Sorry. Maybe you can adjust the image size and crop it to get rid of the headspace, but that would lower its resolution a little bit (I didn't save the original edit. I am just starting to tinker with these watercolor portraits. My mistake.)

Black Geyser is finally up on Steam. Hope several of you will wishlist it to boost attention to it. It is going into EA. Expand the EA section on the store page and read it. There are great details there about what the devs intend for the game before final release in Q1 2022. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1374930/Black_Geyser_Couriers_of_Darkness/

Agree. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

Just to re-ignite gun control discussions..

Nevermind, I decided to just follow the Photoshop tutorial and BAM! I think I'm happy with the result. Sharing for everyone (The first one is based on art from Kieran Yanner. I'm not sure about the second one):

If I can't make a character that looks EXACTLY like Private Vasquez then this game is an automatic fail. They have her bandana, which is a good start, but it sucks that they are holding it hostage as a pre-order bonus.

And according to Dogma, she’s female

https://www.gog.com/game/arma_cold_war_assault All. Get. Operation Flashpoint. Free on. GOG.

Yes. Having the protagonist be androgynous makes perfect sense for a MegaTen game. The games tend to focus on a conflict of philosophies, namely order/control vs anarchy/freedom. Ultimately, you get to decide what form the remade world will take, which effectively makes you God. God being androgynous always made sense to me. I mean, in a patriarchal society God will be referred to as "He" and in a matriarchal society as "She", that's only natural. If such a being truly exists then it would be both and neither. It makes sense in my head, anyway. Maybe I'm just weird?

Or the creature from the movie Life.

Construct the same statement but with women (or people of color etc.) and you can see how nonsensical that statement is. Would you favor a fantasy setting where women can only choose to pick the handmaiden or midwife class? Because if women in medival fantasy settings could pick any class and if that would be totally normal in that setting - wouldn't that be a spit in the face of the actual struggles women went through back then? Well, let me put it this way: ROFL NO! To which extend is there a point to have? The only spit in the face that might occur when you depict a setting in which certain minorities are treated as equal is the self-perceived spit in the face of those who don't want that minority to be treated equal. Ask gay people if they think that medieval fantasy settings in which gay people are accepted do spit in the face of the actual struggles of past gay people.