Monte Carlo

Everything seems more sinister in German. 'Nipple,' for example, translates into 'breast wart.'

My son is playing 'Stonefall,' a deeply clever Minecraft plug-in that mirrors Titanfall. Even to the extent that your 'pilot' shoots out of doomed 'titans' (which are MC golems). Really cool.

Can we agree that this thread is...

I'm pretty disappointed the title doesn't have the word 'Shadows' in it.

Not very classy of Sawyer not to comment in this thread.

It's worse to release a buggy game on schedule than a stable game late. Word.

Strikeback is a guilty pleasure, utter nonsense done well. The theme music is brilliant, the production values are high and it doesn't take itself too seriously. It also has guess actors like Charles Dance and Dougray Scott. The stunts are great and the two main actors have taken the time to learn proper weapon-handling. It also has an Australian playing an American and an American playing a Brit. One of the first rules of Strikeback is that one never questions the internal consistency of Strikeback. It's in the tradition of testosterone-dripping nonsense like The Professionals.

Strange, my Level 66 Barbarian feels more durable than my level 70 Crusader. I've got 27 or 28 Paragon levels.

Wow, just checked out the Dragon Age wiki. It's like an enormous encyclopaedia of Fail.

* shrugs * All weapons jam, even the fabled AKs. Add dusty conditions, combat conditions where weapons get knocked about, it's inevitable. It's why your drills versus the other bloke's are so important.

Wow, I haven't read a D&D module for years... now they give the DM a script? * grumbles * And, yeah, 'Abdel Adrian' needs to be a 28th level badass.

Indira I'm going to need your help kitting out my Barb and Crusader.

^ I read it in an interview with David Gaider somewhere. They changed the Slayer to the PC relatively late in development, IE modders have found long-dead .ini files relating to it apparently. Dave G obviously shares a lot about his work with fans. He once sent me a personal email when I couldn't get his mod to work for BG2 and helped me fix it. For all my reservations about the directions his work's taken, he is a pretty nice guy. Edit: I don't know why it's significant, but iirc the Imoen thing might be linked (technically, not story-wise) with why you lose your Bhaal powers after you get the power to become the Slayer. Then someone modded it back in so you keep them. If you think about the story arc, the end of Spellhold is the perfect time for Imoen to turn into a giant, spiked avatar of destruction.

Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter. A British (Hammer) horror movie from 1974. Man, what can I say? A middle European village in the early 1800s is stalked by a vampire that sucks the youth from beautiful maidens, turning them into dying, hideous old crones. This didn't overly bother the special effects department, as they simply swapped out the nubile actress for an old woman with some bad make-up. Voila! Anyhow, the dashing Captain Kronos (a blonde, Katana-armed fop in jodphurs) is enlisted to help. He arrives in the village with his hunch-back sidekick (really), Professor Hieronymous Grost. En route Kronos rescues a ravishing gypsy girl from the stocks "for dancing on a Sunday). This is the lovely Caroline Munro... I won't spoil the rest, suffice it to say it involves drinking fine wines and brandies, smoking cheroots, slaying ruffians in taverns and burying toads in small boxes. A mystery is solved, baddies are slain and camp aristocrats are unveiled as the sinister necromantic blackguards we always knew they were! A thoroughly entertaining, so-bad-it's-good slice of schlock, pulpy nonsense. Go Kronos Go!

Not as mass-produced, standard issue battle rifles. Technically impressive, but heavy and over-designed. M1 wins on efficacy, in my opinion of course.

^ Man, you'd love Strikeback. It's basically lots of hot, very fit girls with guns killing Tangoes. This is a gorgeous FSB chick who ends up naked. And it stars Rhona...

Sacred is good, wholesome, cheesy fun.

^ Given that, originally, Imoen was going to be the Slayer / betrayer figure in BG2, I'd say the writer was over-analysing things TBH.

Booze, dear boy. The oldest and the best.

True. And yet... If someone develops a personal weapon system that's a force multiplier then your analysis is wrong. Example - the machinegun. Everyone bought a maxim gun then all of a sudden people were carrying smaller versions. By the end of WW1 soldiers could carry personal weapons that allowed them to put down lots of rounds. The reliability of weapon 'a' versus weapon 'b' all of a sudden became extremely important. Conversely, the well-trained Tommy with a .303 Lee Enfield could put down more accurate fire en masse than a poorly trained rabble with faster-firing weapons. There are so many variables, the quality of a weapon being one of them. Take, for example, next-gen networked personal weapons firing caseless flechette ammunition (will happen in my lifetime). The weapon system is more accurate and allows for better tactical awareness / coordination (it's networked via soldier-borne comms and HUD) and lethality is increased (faster rof / penetration). Add in another factor, say weapon reliability and training then you've got a war-winning combination. Imagine a company of networked soldiers with super-duper flechette rifles can take on a battalion of olde worlde 21st century infantry? Then your argument heads south. It's the argument that the aggregation of small advantages = big advantage. Well trained soldiers with mediocre weapons will trump mediocre soldiers with state-of-the-art weapons most of the time. So, when all things are looking equal, just like sportsmen, soldiers jockey for every possible advantage. Be it fast-release mechanisms for fluid reloading, optics, slings, grips... you get the idea. There is also psychology at play. As the old saying goes 'remember your personal weapon was made by the lowest bidder.' When you know you're kit is better than the other guy's then that instils morale. Morale is a non-quantifiable but crucial factor in war. Did the US army in WW2, soldier-for-soldier, perform better than the Wehrmacht? Nope. But the US soldier, with rubber-soled boots, modern uniforms made of comfortable fabrics, utterly modern self-loading rifles (M1 Garand - best rifle of the war) and radios that worked... that gives a man confidence. These are of course tactical considerations that don't take into account tanks, guns, aircraft, nukes and geopolitics. But wars often turn on a fulcrum (Arnhem, Omaha Beach, The Hurtingen Forest, Hue, Fallujah) and those fulcrums pivot on men with guns fighting. That is why men in the profession of violence obsess over their tools.

Apparently we have a residual tolerance to stress. Some of this is chemical, genetic, experiential. In much the same way as low exposure to a toxin will encourage resistance, ditto with stress. For example, emergency service crews see a lot of dead bodies in accidents. They are often exposed to this incrementally, and build up a tolerance to it. They also have coping mechanisms, ranging from peer support through to sardonic humour through to self-medication on alcohol or other drugs. A continuum of coping that might, or might not lead to problems later on. As one travels through life, a lot of trauma is compartmentalised. Put in a mental box, stored away and dealt with. Until some event kicks the box over and all the Bad Stuff goes slithering all over the place. Like a bucket of roaches kicked over, it's difficult to bundle it all back in at once. This is, for want of a better word, a nervous breakdown. It's the classic cliché of the 'shell-shocked' / PTSD suffering war vet going loco at the sound of a car back-firing. Depression is a controversial subject. Suffice it to say that a settled view in the mainstream psychiatric world is that the chemicals in our brains are sent askew by these episodes. Modern antidepressants are designed to address this. So: (a) Stressors are manageable (b) contingent on coping mechanisms, stress is manageable for prolonged periods (c ) extraordinary stressors, for the patient, can lead to mental health problems over either a short or protracted period of time (d) Recovery is possible, either partial or complete Hey, I hear you ask, that's great but we're talking about Call of Cthulu, right? Yes. My point is that the SAN mechanic in CoC sort of makes sense. 'Investigators' in CoC aren't paramedics. Nobody says, "hey, Hank, here's a tiny tentacle to look at for you to build up a residual resistance to eldritch horror." No, in CoC the player is immediately exposed to the totality of the Elder Races in one super-hit. It is meant to be irreparably shocking. It's like living in a unicorn-filled paradise for all your life then being shipped out to The Somme on Day One. Overwhelming. Terrifying. Mind-manglingly horrible. When we played CoC back in the day the GM allowed characters to use drugs to control their SAN, as a coping mechanism. Of course, there was an in-game quid pro quo (my barn-storming WW1 vet pilot, for example, became an opium fiend and couldn't fly anymore). But it added some resilience to characters while maintaining the SAN aspect as a mechanic. Just, as usual, my two copper pieces.

Woldan, the US armed services have been arguing about which camouflage pattern to adopt for ten years. What hope have they got when it comes to actual hardware. Weapons systems aren't purchased in isolation. You're buying training, maintenance, peripherals, doctrine and interoperability too. It's an enormous undertaking. As for flechette, yeah I think it's the future but not this turn of the wheel. My man in khaki reckons larger calibre for the next ten-fifteen years and maybe caseless ammo systems after that. Armies always fight the last war. Hurdy hurr. We're buying stuff to fight lightly armed insurgents at the moment, not the Russians. Ironic really.

* shrugs * Anyone watching the Pistorius trial would see that SA has an efficient, first-world judicial set-up. I can't comment on the quality of policing, lawyers or pre-legal casework, but simply watching what's going on in court gives you the impression that proceedings are fair and of a high standard.

^ Yeah me too.

I've been gambling blood shards for items. All of them suck, I've done about sixty and got one item that was half-decent. I'm nowhere near kitted out with uber-gear, either.