Monte Carlo

I have more hair than Bill, luckily. Same beard. And I'm not a hippy.

Being ruled by teachers would be dull. Lots of learning times tables and stuff. Being ruled by mages wouldn't be dull. Sorcerous experiments, enslaving nations with necromancy and stuff.

That's good news. I've been watching it on the news. 6 cops and 7 protesters dead. Independence Square looks like a war-zone.

Nah, I've got very thick, wavy hair. In fact in r/l I'd make a really good furry. The mullet-grooming schedule would have taken over my life.

^ Real men buy new keyboards and laugh at the smouldering remains of The One That Let Them Down. Burn thy keyboard in a pyre of old electronics doused in petrol. Breatheth in the fumes and bellow at the sky-gods, as a warning to lacklustre consumer electronics.

I had a flat-top myself. More Ivan Drago than Vanilla Ice.

I like your prose, the angry bit about Reaganomics was good. I think you'll find my gratitude to the kids fighting out in hot, sandy places is in this thread. Mind you, I've three friends my age who've served or are serving in said conflicts. The professional 21st century grunt is digging fox-holes well into his or her forties. But man, you really did miss out on the eighties. I got the tail end of it as a twenty-year old and it really rocked.

^ Whoever thought that up deserves a medal.

I am watching the Domino's pizza order tracking system. It's like Skyrim, but with more of a plot.

Swap that out for a kebab and you're just about right.

I was in basic training in '85, son. *strikes manly pose*

THERE ARE NO ROMANCES IN THIS GAME.

My son is at school and they aren't allowed to fight. Fighting is a massive no-no. School is feminised. As Tyler Durden famously said, "How much can you possibly know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?" Instead, the boys are starting to act like girls. They form cliques. They make catty comments. They exclude each other. It makes me angry. Boys are buzzing capsules of hormones, they need to climb trees, fall out of them and occasionally give each other a punch on the nose. I really worry about that, about how because women run the education system it's suddenly 'better.' I like having made my own thread to have a middle-aged grumble in. Baaaaaah.

^ Beer is both a medicine and a food group. Happy person = better patience. Makes complete sense. Oby should be here - the Russians only declassified beer as an official food group last year.

Laid up with an illness? Check. On meds that preclude alcohol? Check. Pizza menu? Check. Beer? Check. Jason Statham movie, a really bad one? Check. Recovery imminent.

* shrugs * There are twenty-year-old kids fighting in Afghanistan with NATO forces who humble me with their service. Of course, their NCOs think it's difficult to motivate them once unplugged from pizza hut and ipads, but then again I'm sure a Viking would have found a WW2 soldier with his issue of cigarettes and chocolate a wuss.

Character-building stuff is required, Nonek, I agree. Now I'm too old for conscription, I think a war is in order. A large one.

And there's me, old enough to be your father. By a fairly long shot. Would you make me some warm milk, please?

... or Generation 'Y' or people born in the mid-late 1980s. Bret Easton Ellis calls them Generation Wuss. He gets labelled a troll, a contrarian and a hater. This article, by a twentysomething, made me think: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10644664/Id-rather-be-in-Generation-Wuss-than-a-middle-aged-cliche.html Now I'm not comparing myself to Ellis, and in fact I'm a little bit younger. I am, however, broadly speaking in the same generational grid square. And on this forum I get PMs, brick-bats and reported to moderators quite a lot. Why? Well, if BE-E is right it's because my generation is snarkier, tougher and has a higher sperm count than people born in the eighties. By the way, is anyone hurt by that? I don't necessarily agree, but it's interesting. No it's not, Monte, you arrogant old fart, you cry. No, listen. It's interesting because if Bret is even 15% correct (and I think there is a grain of truth in what he's saying) then perhaps Generation 'Y' is the first bunch of people to be more censorious than it's parents. People my age with kids in their late teens do comment on how dull their kids can be, my brother genuinely wishes his daughter would be a crazy bitch. Instead she's a straight 'a' physics student who drinks rarely and knows lots about art history. Oi vei. And some of the Twentysomethings I work with genuinely think I'm a dinosaur who drinks too much, hates the planet and is a jaded, all-round douche. I might be. OTOH, 1. I don't drink too much. I just like beer. A lot. Plus I know dozens of hangover remedies. And yes, guy in a silly hat with a waxed moustache, I will stand you a round because your generation is so bloody poor. Oh, is that a new iPhone? 2. I don't want to kill the planet. I just think the science has yet to be settled, most greens are socialists in camouflage and, er, the Chinese and Yanks need to sort their acts out before I lose sleep over it. 3. I'm not a jaded douche. I've just been around longer than you and finally worked out the lay of the land. And I think tattoos on your hands and neck are ****ing stupid. And you didn't invent beards. By the way, I still lend these people money now and then because I have more of it than them. I let them eat at my house and empty the fridge. I make phone calls for them with my peers who can help them out with their careers. In short, If I'm not a good guy then I'm not a bad one either. So, community of all ages, is generation 'Y' a bunch of soft, unicorn-riding, wrapped in cotton-wool babies who need to get with the program? Or is Bret Easton Ellis just an overpaid, ageing troll? Over to you. And...

^ It would be a brilliant plot. A mageocracy that ruthlessly tries to hunt down the practitioners of a deadly new science that threatens their supremacy. I remember an awful Keanu Reeves movie - they invented a wonder fuel that made petrol redundant and everyone tried to kill him.

Well, I'm not a political scientist, but Watt Tyler and the Peasant's revolt has class-struggle* overtones. And that was in 1381. The peasants weren't after significant societal change - a 'rights paradigm' as we know it simply didn't exist in a highly religious medieval Europe (although England did bring us the Magna Carta). What they did want was a better deal within the existing order - lower taxes and an end to serfdom. So the notion of revolting peasants, protesting en masse with flaming torches and pitchforks, is a perfectly valid trope for a game such as PoE. although in a fantasy game where any sort of industrialisation is belied by magic (after all, most fantasy worlds seem to be aeons old yet folks are still running around with spears), there would be alternative and possibly interesting political consequences. * I accept there was no 'class' as per the Marxist definition, but I'm sure some of the more rebellious peasantry looked at their betters and very much doubted the bollocks the priest told them every Sunday about fate and divine rights.

God it's such a long time since I read Das Kapital. I think it ended up lining my gerbil's cage.

The post Lurky linked to just confirmed my worst fears about Bioware designers.

^ HH this is why this argument depresses me. People weigh in who (a) haven't thought to use the search function and (b) fail to appreciate very basic concepts around creating content.

Get back to me once BioWare makes a character with depth like Kreia. They can't? Wow. I'm actually speechless that this guy thinks Bioware makes characters. They make the gaming equivalent of inflatable sex toys, ludicrous facsimiles.